Patients Making Meaning

This book explores how women make meaning at various health flashpoints in their lives, overcoming fear, anxiety, and anger to draw upon self-advocacy, research, and crucial decision-making.

Bryna Siegel Finer is Professor of English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, USA, where she serves as the Director of Undergraduate Writing Programs. She is the co-editor of Writing Program Architecture and Women's Health Advocacy. Cathryn Molloy is Professor of Writing Studies in the English department at the University of Delaware, USA. She is the author of Rhetorical Ethos in Health and Medicine: Patient Credibility, Stigma, and Misdiagnosis and is co-editor of the Rhetoric of Health and Medicine journal. Jamie White-Farnham is Professor in the Writing Program at University of Wisconsin-Superior, USA, where she serves as Director of Teaching & Learning. She is the co-editor of Writing Program Architecture and Women's Health Advocacy.

Chapter 1: Starting from Friendship and Rhetoric: An Introduction to Patient Epistemology Chapter 2: Toward a Theory of Patient Epistemologies: How Health Flashpoints Engender Cyclical Rhetorical and Identity Work Chapter 3: Searching for Meaning and Support: What Women with Breast Cancer Say Chapter 4: Entering the Conversation: Rhetorical Encounters with a Stagnated Menopause Discourse Chapter 5: Making Sense of Sobriety as a Woman: Expanding Options for Patient Epistemologies Chapter 6: A Rhetorical Autoethnographic Sketch of Patient Epistemology Chapter 7: Afterword: Looking to the Future of Patient Epistemology