KAREN GOLD PhD MSW RSW
Pronouns: she/her
Narrative Medicine for Clients, Clinicians, and Communities
Short Bio:
Karen is a registered social worker, educator, and writing facilitator. She currently teaches in the Narrative-Based Medicine Lab at the University of Toronto.
About Me:
As a newly graduated social worker in the early 1990s I was drawn to narrative therapy and the idea of “story” as a lens to understand people’s lives. This was soon followed by an interest in the narrative healthcare, inspired by discovering Rita Charon’s book Narrative Medicine in the hospital library.
I have been incorporating narrative approaches into my classroom and clinical teaching for many years and started writing publicly about struggles in my own practice. I ran reflective writing groups for clinicians and learners and taught in the Health, Arts & Humanities Certificate at the University of Toronto for health professional students.
In 2010 I entered an inter-disciplinary doctoral program for practitioners through Tilburg University in The Netherlands. I spent the next few years immersed in reading and thinking about narrative inquiry and reflective writing by clinicians.
Informed by almost 30 years in healthcare, I have a special interest in communication skills and building resilient patients, practitioners, and health systems. I am certified in the Amherst Writers Method and have done advanced narrative medicine training at Columbia University.
I currently do freelance work as a clinical social worker and educator. I am the Curriculum Lead at the Narrative-Based Medicine Lab at Temerty Medicine.