Twenty-first International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

COVID-19 has altered the way that we view the future, particularly concerning the future of healthcare and dealing with a global pandemic. This paper discusses the role of doctor narratives, patient narratives, and fiction novels in terms of how the NHS dealt with the overwhelming COVID-19 waves. The paper discusses Wave 1 of COVID-19 and Wave 2 and the differences between the responses. The paper also offers a look into critical medical humanities and examines the course in which we should go in terms of medicine, medical professionals, and patients becoming medical professionals. The paper argues for a role for patient narratives and expresses how stories help us situate historical and situational context into a particular form that connects literary criticism, medicine, science, and English together. The paper outlines facets of COVID-19 from its epistemology and in turn, goes through a breakdown of experiences that the patient has experienced. There are differences in response to COVID-19 by different patients, particularly patients in care homes as opposed to the latter. Further, the way that some of the COVID-19 responses were, showcased and explicated the experiences of various doctors and carers across the UK. The paper poses the question of how the pandemic was handled by health professionals handled. The exigence with these narratives is that they may be missing a particular view from the stance of literary critics to examine what is going on.