Storytelling in Medical Education: Narrative Medicine as a Resource for Interdisciplinary Collaboration

Abstract

Objective: The study intended to use narrative medicine study for interdisciplinary collaboration to let medical and healthcare students have a chance to interact with one another and listen to patients’ stories to enhance students’ reflective thinking, communication, empathy, and narrative medicine writing skills. Methods: A fifteen-week quasi-experimental design was used to examine the learning outcomes of the intervention. Two groups of students were randomly assigned as the experimental group (33 students) and the control group (32 students). Before and after the intervention, both groups had to fill in a Reflective Thinking Scale for Healthcare Students and Providers (RTS-HSP), Patient–Healthcare Provider Communication Scale (P-HCS), Empathy Scale in Patient Care (ES-PC), and Analytic Narrative Medicine Writing Scoring Rubric (ANMWSR). Results: The findings showed that on the reflective thinking scale, experimental group students had significantly higher reflective thinking posttest scores in “reflective skepticism,” “empathetic reflection,” and “critical open-mindedness,” but not in “self-examination.” As for patient–healthcare provider communication, they had significantly higher posttest scores in all “perception of trust and receptivity,” “patient-centered information giving,” “rapport building,” and “facilitation of patient involvement” factors. As for empathy, they had significant higher posttest scores in “behavioral empathy” and “affective empathy,” but not in “intelligent empathy.” In narrative medical writing skills, they had significant higher posttest scores in the “attention → representation → affiliation,” “depth of reflection,” “focus and context structure,” and “ideas and elaboration” sections, but not in the “language and conventions” section. Conclusion: The findings suggest that narrative medicine is worth recommending for interdisciplinary collaboration for healthcare education.

Fostering Empathy, Implicit Bias Mitigation, and Compassionate Behavior in a Medical Humanities Course

“…They value their learning teams so much that they would likely want to continue these written and verbal learning experiences with support from teammates they had in basic sciences (recall Items 2, 4, and 6 in Table 1 and see the student's reflection in Appendix E). Such sharing of stories among healthcare professional students [27] has been used in other contexts to foster their interdisciplinary collaboration [43].…”

Impact of a Pandemic and Remote Learning on Team Development and Elements of Compassion in Prospective Medical Students Taking a Medical Humanities Course

“…(See items 2, 4, and 6 in Table 1 .) Sharing their experiences about rotations would resemble the story sharing used elsewhere to promote healthcare student collaboration [ 48 , 49 ].…”

Mind Your Language: Factors Enhancing Students’ English Language Skills in an International Medical Programme (IMP)

“…One initiative that has been gaining ground is the introduction of humanities to enhance inter disciplinary collaboration, patient communication and care [22]. A study conducted among medical and healthcare students in Taiwan concluded that narrative medicine has positive effects on the students [25]. Recommendations would be to invest and increase access to these types of programmes, diversify the narratives to be inclusive of contemporary culture and arts, and to intergrate these programmes with clinically related modules in the medical curriculum, rather than offer them as stand alone modules.…”