Beyond the Bedside: A Narrative Model of Knowledge Translation in Reproductive Health

This book makes a bold but crucial claim: storytelling is not an embellishment to medical knowledge-it is the engine that drives it. Evidence becomes meaningful only when it is framed and interpreted within existing stories. Focusing on reproductive health, Beyond the Bedside explores diverse understandings of medical evidence in relation to some of today's most contested topics, including embryo selection in IVF, puberty blockers for transgender youth and abortion care. Across these cases, the authors reveal how identical evidence can lead to starkly different syntheses, guidelines, and public positions, depending on the narratives into which it is woven. Introducing the concept of deep knowledge translation, the book offers a new way of analysing how evidence moves across research, clinical practice, policy, law, and public debate. It shows why medical controversies persist and how understanding narrative dynamics can transform the way we produce and use knowledge. Available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction; 2. Narrative Perspectives on Medicine; 3. Modes of Narration – Evidence-based Medicine and Knowledge Translation; 4. Narrative Framing of Puberty Blocker Research in Transgender Youth Healthcare; 5. Narratives of (Ab)normality – IVF and Mosaic Embryos; 6. Contested Evidence and Narrative Authority in WHO's 2022 Abortion Care Guideline; 7. Towards a Narrative Model of Knowledge Translation; References; Index.

About the Author :
Eivind Engebretsen is Professor of Medical Humanities, University of Oslo and Dean of Circle U Open Campus. He has worked with Julia Kristeva to develop a translational approach to the medical humanities, is author of numerous articles in leading journals, and author/co-author of seven books, including Rethinking Evidence in the Time of Pandemics (CUP, 2022, with Mona Baker). Mona Baker is Affiliate Professor at the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare Education, Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo, Norway. Professor Baker is also co-coordinator of the Genealogies of Knowledge Research Network, and Honorary Dean of the Graduate School of Translation & Interpreting at Beijing Foreign Studies University. She is the author of Rethinking Evidence in the Time of Pandemics (CUP, 2022, with Eivind Engebretsen).

Review :
'Engebretsen and Baker have long been at the forefront of expanding narrativity beyond the remit of traditional narrative medicine. In Beyond the Bedside, they clearly and comprehensively demonstrate how a reflexive and narrative model of knowledge translation can ethically address the plurality of value-laden and conflicting stories that circulate within and beyond medicine, shaping, guiding, and clashing with personal and corporeal experiences. As the authors argue, knowledge, once inscribed, is always bound to be re-narrated. And once you see the narrative workings of medicine and science, you cannot unsee them.' Şebnem Susam-Saraeva, Personal Chair of Translation Studies, University of Edinburgh 'Engebretsen and Baker have written a book that every clinician who has ever puzzled over why good evidence fails to change practice should read. Their central insight – that knowledge translation is not a technical pipeline but a narrative process, shot through with values, power, and competing storylines – illuminates why medical controversies so rarely resolve themselves, even when more data accumulate. The reproductive health case studies (puberty blockers, IVF embryo selection, abortion care) are compellingly analysed and painfully timely: these are precisely the areas where clinicians feel the ground shifting beneath them, where the same evidence base seems to authorise diametrically opposed guidelines and public positions. The concept of 'deep knowledge translation' offers a genuinely new and clinically useful lens – asking not just 'what does the evidence say?' but 'within whose story does it say it?'. This is a landmark contribution to medical humanities that deserves a wide readership among clinicians, policy-makers, and anyone who wants to understand why evidence so often fuels conflict rather than consensus.' Trisha Greenhalgh, Professor, University of Oxford 'Engebretsen and Baker's book critically traces how knowledge is transferred in three notable reproductive health cases. It challenges the traditional separation between the humanities and science by proposing a narrative model of knowledge translation. This model considers not only what is recognised as knowledge in each case but also explores the complex relationship between narrative, power, and evidence. It raises questions about the nature of knowing and who shapes the stories that matter in medicine. What is unique is that the authors extend narrative medicine's ethic of attention beyond the bedside to encompass the entire translational process. At the same time, they resist the tendency, highlighted by their seven principles of deep knowledge translation, to let operationalization reduce diverse perspectives to premature consensus.' Mette Terp Høybye, Professor of Medical Anthropology, Interacting Minds Centre, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University, Denmark