In 1993 I invented a teaching tool I called "Parallel Chart", and I ave been using it since. It is a very simple device. I tell my students: Every day you write in the hospital chart about each of your patients. You know exactly what to write there and the form in which to write it. You write about your patient's current complaints, the results of the physical exam, laboratry findings, opinion of consultants and the plan. If your patient dying of prostate cancer reminds you of your grandfather, who died of that disease last summer, and each time you go int patient's roo, you weep for your grandfather, you cannot write that in the hospital chart. We will not let you. And yet it has to be written somewhere. You write it in the Parallel Chart. Rita Charon - Honoring the stories of Illness