From dispensing to caring: Enhancing patient-provider relationships through parallel chart writing in a pharmacist-managed clinic.

Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is a complex autoimmune disease characterized by progressive fibrosis, vasculopathy, and multisystem involvement. While clinical assessment appropriately emphasizes measurable outcomes such as organ involvement and survival, these metrics do not fully capture the lived experience of the disease. This perspective examines how SSc reshapes embodiment, identity, and patient experience beyond conventional clinical measures. Drawing on insights from literature and narrative medicine, it explores themes of bodily estrangement, identity disruption, and adaptation in chronic illness. These dimensions have direct implications for patient-physician communication, treatment adherence, and shared decision-making. Integrating narrative awareness into rheumatology practice may enhance clinicians' ability to recognize psychosocial burden and align care with patient values. A more comprehensive approach to systemic sclerosis, therefore, requires attention not only to measurable disease parameters but also to the meanings patients attach to bodily change and identity over time.

Mental health stigma and underutilization of psychiatric care remain significant challenges in Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) communities, driven by cultural norms of silence, the model minority myth, and structural barriers to care. Narrative medicine, a clinical approach that utilizes storytelling, reflective writing, and deep listening, offers a promising approach to address these challenges by centering identity, voice, and meaning making in mental health engagement, processes that are foundational to psychological healing. In this Perspective, we describe "A is for ___", a novel narrative medicine-based empowerment framework developed through A-Team Med, a community-based nonprofit organization. The framework is left intentionally blank to symbolize the tremendous diversity of the AANHPI experience and counter monolithic representations of Asian American identity. Applied in community settings, the framework invites participants to complete the prompt "A is for ___" by selecting a personally meaningful word beginning with the letter "A" that reflects the individual's AANHPI lived experience. This open-ended structure serves as an accessible entry point for self-authorship, critical reflection, and dialogue about the AANHPI experience and mental health topics traditionally underdiscussed within this community. We situate this intervention within theories of narrative identity, cultural psychiatry, and the social determinants of mental health. We describe the implementation of this framework in a community workshop with over 50 AANHPI adolescents across multiple underserved community centers in Los Angeles. Author observations of participant experiences suggest that the exercise facilitated emotional expression, reduced stigma surrounding mental health conversations, and fostered validation and a sense of belonging. We further discuss practical applications of this framework in clinical encounters, community psychoeducation, and youth programs, as well as its potential for digital and telehealth adaptation. By reframing mental health engagement through narrative agency rather than pathology, "A is for ___" offers a low-cost, scalable, and culturally responsive tool to support mental health destigmatization and empowerment in AANHPI and other marginalized communities.

This article examines how intergenerational memory shapes clinicians' moral experience and empathic engagement in everyday clinical practice. Drawing on a reflexive account of a routine medical encounter that unexpectedly activated inherited histories of war, displacement, and fear, the essay is situated within anthropological and medical humanities scholarship on clinician subjectivation, postmemory, and moral experience. While existing literature has examined how professional training and institutional norms shape clinicians' subjectivities, less attention has been paid to how pre-professional, intergenerational histories of trauma enter clinical encounters and quietly inform ethical perception. By engaging concepts from psychological anthropology and narrative medicine, this article argues that clinicians' inherited affective histories are not extraneous to care but constitutive of moral judgment and empathic response. Attending to these dimensions of subjectivity is not antithetical to professionalism but central to reflective and ethically attentive clinical practice.

This paper systematically explores the integration pathways, challenges, and future directions of artificial intelligence (AI) technology and narrative medicine in pediatric medical education. Due to the unique characteristics of the pediatric population, pediatric diagnosis and treatment place higher demands on physicians' empathy, communication skills, and humanistic qualities. Narrative medicine, as a key paradigm to address deficiencies in medical humanities, provides a theoretical framework and practical methods for cultivating these core humanistic qualities. However, its teaching promotion and practice face challenges such as insufficient scaling, lack of standardization, and limited depth of feedback. Advances in AI technology, particularly in natural language processing and generative AI, offer new opportunities to overcome these challenges. Based on a systematic literature review, relevant theories, research methods, and practical outcomes of the integration between AI and narrative medicine are synthesized, and a three-stage integration model of "independent development - skill empowerment - collaborative deepening" is constructed. The integration process faces significant challenges including technical ethics, educational integration, and value alienation. Finally, a new paradigm for future pediatric medical education centered on "human-machine collaboration" is proposed, aiming to cultivate the next generation of pediatricians who possess excellent technical skills, profound empathy, and resilient professional spirit, thereby opening new perspectives.

Narrative medicine is defined as medicine practiced with the competence to absorb, interpret, and respond to narratives. We hereby present a resource compiling narrative medicine texts, aiming to make narratives created by patients and/or their families fully accessible to citizens, by developing a documentary database and describing its characteristics. Active bibliographic search, March-June 2022 for narratives in Spanish and/or Catalan written after the year 2000 by patients and/or their companions. Subsequently, narratives up to June 2024 were included. The compilation is available in a searchable and open-source web ( https://osf.io/pk9b3/ ). Three hundred seventeen narratives, 50.14% written by women, are showing an increase from 2020 onwards. Texts are related to cancer/hematological diseases (45.11%), mental illnesses (10.41%), neurodegenerative diseases (9.4%). Personal stories (28.7%), autobiographical (11.29%), companion stories (5%), children's or young adult stories/narratives (8.87%). There are studies, websites, and digital platforms that recognize the importance of narrative as part of the therapeutic process and how it improves the experience of illness (either one's own or that of a family member). Despite this, to date, no one had compiled a collection of patient texts in Spanish and Catalan. For this reason, we believe our database is innovative and can pave the way for improving the patient-professional relationship.

Narratives of the beginning - first-time mothers' experiences of the first days postnatally: a qualitative study.

Narrative medicine has been increasingly advocated as a means of fostering empathy in medical education; however, empirical evidence integrating both effectiveness and processes underlying empathy development remains limited, particularly in non-Western contexts. This study aimed to evaluate the impact of a narrative medicine-based interdisciplinary course on medical students' empathy and to explore how such an intervention facilitates empathic development. A convergent parallel mixed-methods design was employed in this single-center pilot study. Third-year undergraduate clinical medicine students from Shanghai University & Health Sciences were randomly assigned to an intervention group ([Formula: see text]), which received an 8-week narrative medicine course including close reading, parallel chart writing, and reflective group discussion, or to a control group ([Formula: see text]) that followed the standard curriculum. Quantitative data were collected using the Jefferson Scale of Empathy-Student Version (JSE-S) before and after the intervention and analyzed using descriptive statistics, independent t-tests, and analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) to examine short-term changes in self-reported empathy-related attitudes. Qualitative data were obtained through post-intervention semi-structured interviews and analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis to provide contextualized insights into students' perceived learning processes and to help interpret the quantitative findings. After adjusting for baseline scores, the intervention group was associated with higher post-intervention self-reported overall empathy scores and higher scores in the cognitive dimension of empathy than the control group ([Formula: see text]). No significant between-group difference was observed for the Compassionate Care subscale. Qualitative analysis identified four core themes: (1) a shift from a disease-centered to a person-centered perspective; (2) enhanced narrative-based communication; (3) emotional resonance and reflective processing; and (4) narrative practices as resources for coping and professional growth. Integration of findings suggests that narrative medicine education may support early cognitive and affective processes related to empathy, with behavioral expressions of compassionate care potentially developing over a longer period. This mixed-methods study found that a structured narrative medicine course was associated with short-term changes in medical students' self-reported empathy-related attitudes, particularly in cognitive and reflective dimensions. By integrating quantitative outcomes with qualitative insights, the findings highlight empathy as a dynamic process and suggest that incorporating narrative medicine into undergraduate medical education may be beneficial, with behavioral outcomes to be evaluated in future longitudinal studies.

Survivorship after critical illness is often characterised by fragmented recovery and lingering cognitive, psychological, and physical impairments collectively described as post-intensive care syndrome. Current recovery frameworks and follow-up models remain inconsistently delivered, poorly standardised, and rarely address survivors' and families' need to make sense of the intensive care unit (ICU) experience in a transparent, inclusive, and sensitive way. The Critical Illness Survivorship Programme is proposed to humanise post-intensive care by integrating generative artificial intelligence technologies with co-designed, person-centred recovery strategies. This discussion paper provides the theoretical foundation for the proposed Critical Illness Survivorship Programme, which intends to humanise post-intensive care recovery through ethically governed, artificial intelligence-enabled narrative approaches. The Critical Illness Survivorship Programme redefines recovery as both a biological and narrative process. Drawing from interpretive nursing inquiry, narrative medicine, cognitive rehabilitation, and responsible artificial intelligence design, the Critical Illness Survivorship Programme is designed to generate personalised intensive care unit journey summaries that translate complex health-record data into accessible, emotionally attuned stories, visualisations, and audio outputs. These narratives aim to support sense-making, memory integration, and emotional recovery while promoting transparency, inclusivity, and cultural sensitivity. The proposed Critical Illness Survivorship Programme will offer a conceptual pathway for developing ethically governed, artificial intelligence-enabled tools that bridge digital innovation and human connection in survivorship care. It emphasises interdisciplinary collaboration, trauma-informed communication, and co-design as essential safeguards for compassionate technology integration. Future research should examine the feasibility, ethical oversight, and educational implications of the Critical Illness Survivorship Programme within clinical pathways. By reframing technology as a partner in empathy and understanding, the Critical Illness Survivorship Programme proposes a potential model of recovery - one that restores coherence, dignity, and meaning in life after critical illness.

This paper employs critical philosophical analysis grounded in hermeneutical phenomenology and contemporary social theory, drawing on the work of Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Emmanuel Levinas, Achille Mbembe, and Giorgio Agamben. The analysis interrogates how NPM-driven austerity in healthcare constitutes a form of ontological violence that simultaneously instrumentalizes patients and strips physicians of clinical autonomy and practical wisdom. We identify five mechanisms through which managerializaton destroys authentic clinical encounter: (1) ontological reduction of patients to 'standing-reserve' (Bestand); (2) destruction of meditative thinking in favour of calculative efficiency; (3) elimination of practical wisdo'm (Phronesis); (4) violation of ethical infinity through fiscal totalisation; and (5) creation of necropolitical zones through waiting-list abandonment. A Constitutional Court judgement has declared that 'irreducible rights must affect the budget, not vice versa'-a principle routinely violated through systematic underfunding. Reclaiming authentic clinical practice requires both material correction (funding floor of 7.5% GDP) and philosophical resistance. Narrative medicine and temporally-protected clinical encounters represent acts of political resistance against managerial logic. This case study warns that even robust universal systems can be destroyed through bureaucratic defunding masquerading as fiscal responsibility.

Advantages of Combined Multiple-Case Teaching and Narrative Medicine Teaching Methods in Orthognathic Surgery.

Children with juvenile dermatomyositis (JDM) and juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) have increased rates of anxiety and depression (15-65%) when compared to healthy children. Narrative medicine, a group-based intervention that allows patients to reflect on medical experiences, improves patient-reported outcomes with reduces depression rates in adults. Given limited data in pediatric rheumatology, this study assesses feasibility of a patient-targeted narrative medicine intervention and its impact on mental health burden in JDM and JIA. We prospectively recruited patients ages 6 to 21 with JDM and JIA for a narrative medicine intervention. Participants were divided by diagnosis and age into four narrative medicine groups, with six sessions held over 3 months. Demographic and medical information were collected by chart review. Patients completed pre- and post-intervention questionnaires including Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System Depression Scale, Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7), Childhood Attitude Towards Illness Scale, Patient Health Questionnaire-8 (PHQ-8), and CoVID Stress Scale. Twelve patients with JDM (67% female) and nine with JIA (78% female) participated in the narrative medicine intervention. All patients participated in at least 50% of sessions and 91% participated in at least four of the six sessions. Wilcoxon signed-rank test revealed no statistically significant difference between pre- and post-intervention questionnaires for any scales. Sub-analysis of those with elevated GAD-7 and PHQ-8 pre-intervention showed a trend towards improvement in anxiety (p=0.057) and no change for depression (p=0.171). Ninety-one percent participated in at least four of the six sessions, demonstrating feasibility. This exploratory study showed trend toward improved anxiety following narrative medicine session participation for those with elevated GAD-7.

Climate change is a global health crisis with substantial mental health consequences. Despite its growing impact, climate-related mental health topics remain insufficiently integrated into medical education. This review synthesizes studies describing educational interventions and assessment tools that address the intersection of climate change and mental health. We conducted a narrative literature review across PubMed, Education Resources Information Center, and PsycINFO in March 2025. Studies were included if they described an educational intervention related to climate-health topics with mental health content or relevance, involved learners in health-related fields, and reported outcomes using validated or author-developed instruments. Fifteen studies met inclusion criteria. Seven described educational interventions, including longitudinal curricula, clerkship sessions, telementoring, and innovative formats such as narrative medicine and reflective tool kits. Fourteen studies included assessment tools, though only one reported psychometric validation (Cronbach's α=0.90). To characterize heterogeneity, studies were grouped by type of climate-health educational focus: direct clinical mental health education (n=9), general climate health education with mental health implications (n=3), and climate-health curricular gap analyses (n=3). Across interventions, outcomes demonstrated improved knowledge, confidence, and preparedness to address climate-related psychological impacts, but barriers remain, particularly limited faculty training, institutional constraints, and absence of validated evaluation frameworks. Current efforts to integrate climate-mental health topics into medical education are promising but still fragmented. Advancing the field requires standardized curricula with explicit and related mental health content, validated assessment tools, interdisciplinary faculty development, learner-centered approaches, climate justice and health equity principles in training, inclusion in board exams, and long-term evaluation.

Human-AI collaboration: Preserving the human touch in a digital age.

This article develops a demanding, though non-exclusivist, version of aesthetic cognitivism and argues for its significance in contemporary medical education. Although the arts are increasingly used to foster empathy, reflection and professional identity formation, their educational value is often justified in instrumental terms, as an enrichment that supports competencies otherwise secured by biomedical training. Against this framing, I argue that aesthetic experience offers a distinctive mode of understanding that can make embodied, affective and existential dimensions of illness and dying experientially salient in ways that are difficult to cultivate reliably within the constraints of formal medical education.Drawing on philosophical aesthetics from Plato and Aristotle to Dewey, Merleau-Ponty, and Berys Gaut, and situating the argument within medical humanities and narrative medicine, the article clarifies how aesthetic form can shape perception, attention and moral imagination without claiming epistemic exclusivity. As a case study, it examines Mike Nichols's film Wit, showing how cinematic form enables learners to grasp aspects of vulnerability, dependency and end-of-life experience that resist straightforward translation into clinical description or ethical abstraction. Based on long-term pedagogical use of the film with medical students, the article concludes that arts-based engagement is best understood not as a supplementary add-on but as a distinctive contribution to professional formation that complements scientific knowledge and ethical reasoning.

Our study aims to assess the effect of narrative medicine education on academic performance and humanistic communication. We performed a PRISMA guideline-based systematic review and meta-analysis. The literature was searched in PubMed, Embase, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, VIP database and Wanfang database up to January 26, 2026. Two independent reviewers performed the study selection, data extraction and quality assessment. We included 20 studies with 1,364 residents. Meta-analyses showed that compared with lecture-based learning (LBL), the application of narrative medicine was associated with significantly improved procedural skill (SMD = 0.98, 95% CI 0.42 to 1.53), humanistic care ability (SMD = 2.62, 95% CI 0.26 to 4.99), empathy ability (SMD = 1.51, 95% CI 0.76 to 2.26), and doctor-patient communication (SMD = 2.19, 95% CI 0.21 to 4.17). Our study also showed that residents were more satisfied with the narrative medicine education than LBL (OR = 6.67, 95% CI 1.74 to 25.51). In conclusion, this is the first meta-analysis to show that narrative medicine may potentially improve the procedural skills and humanistic communication compared with LBL. However, given the substantial heterogeneity and low-certainty evidence, our findings are insufficient for strong practice recommendations. Further high-quality studies are needed to validate these findings. Systematic review registration: https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/view/CRD420261323721.

Many strategic plans falter because they fail to connect with the individuals responsible for bringing them to life. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center bridged the gap between strategy and execution using the age-old human practice of storytelling. By harnessing the emotional power and connective force of narrative, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center reimagined its approach to strategic planning — not as a static document, but as a shared journey.

Narrative medicine is a pedagogical tool for cultivating empathy, communication skills, and humanistic care. The application of narrative medicine methods has several limitations in paediatric training, particularly in China. This pilot study explored the preliminary association between narrative medicine training and the enhancement of empathy and communication skills among Chinese medical students during paediatric endocrinology rotations. Ten undergraduate medical students from Shenzhen University participated in 9.5 weeks of narrative medicine training (11 sessions), which was conducted in small groups during the hospitalization and post-discharge phases. The Jefferson Scale of Empathy and the Doctor-Patient Communication Behaviour Scale were administered before and after the intervention to evaluate the medical students' empathy and communication skills. The differences in the pre-and post-intervention scores were compared using paired t tests. Compared with the baseline scores, the total Jefferson Scale of Empathy scores significantly increased post-intervention (133.10 ± 4.25 vs. 95.97 ± 8.90, P < 0.05), with increases in the scores of 19 items (P < 0.001 after correction for multiple testing). Similarly, compared with the baseline scores, the post-intervention total Doctor-Patient Communication Behaviour Scale scores significantly increased (155.45 ± 5.76 vs. 133.52 ± 3.81, P < 0.05), with all 6 items demonstrating significant increases (P < 0.001 after correction for multiple testing). Although the reported score changes are notable, they should be considered in the context of the study's small sample size, the lack of a comparison group, and the potential influence of confounding factors. Narrative medicine training is associated with the potential to improve empathy and communication skills in paediatric contexts, which provides preliminary evidence for promoting the application of narrative medicine in the humanities training of paediatricians. Given the relatively late introduction of narrative medicine in China, its application in the training of Chinese medical students presents greater prospects and opportunities for the accumulation of more experience.

PurposeAnorexia nervosa (AN) is highly morbid, particularly in adolescence. Narrative-based interventions, which employ storytelling and self-reflection, have improved outcomes for patients with various conditions, but narrative medicine specifically has not been studied in adolescents with AN. This study piloted and evaluated a narrative medicine clinical intervention for adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with AN in an outpatient setting.MethodsParticipants (ages 16–25), stable for outpatient care and in therapy for AN, were recruited through eating disorder clinics and community referrals. The clinical intervention consisted of a 6-week narrative medicine workshop series around themes including identity, embodiment, and resilience. Surveys assessed the intervention’s acceptability, while clinical instruments assessed mental health and eating disorder symptoms; Wilcoxon signed-rank tests evaluated pre- and post-intervention differences. Semi-structured interviews elucidated participants’ experiences of the intervention, and thematic analysis identified emergent themes.ResultsEight participants enrolled, and seven completed the study. The mean age was 21 ± 4 years, and 75% were female. All participants found the intervention highly acceptable. Mean PHQ-9 scores improved after the intervention (13 to 10, p = 0.046). In qualitative analysis, four themes emerged: gaining insight into one’s condition, connecting over shared experiences, recognizing progress to be made, and viewing the workshops as a different type of treatment.ConclusionsThis clinical intervention represents a novel application of narrative medicine for AYAs with AN. Narrative medicine was highly acceptable to participants, who derived meaning and social connection. Future studies may expand the intervention to larger, more diverse populations and further elucidate clinical outcomes and mechanisms for change.Trial registrationClinicalTrials.gov (Identifier: NCT06849830).Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40337-026-01612-y.

ABSTRACT This theoretical essay introduces Artistic Narrative Resonance Theory (ANRT), a novel framework examining how creative podcast storytelling facilitates emotional healing, empathy, and identity coherence. Grounded in narrative therapy, narrative medicine, and media psychology, ANRT conceptualizes individuals as authors of their evolving life stories rather than problems to be solved. As digital media democratizes personal narratives, podcasts emerge as transformative “aural communities” that extend therapeutic voices from clinical settings to mass audiences. Through a contemplative interpretation of an illustrated Greek artistic podcast, the study identifies authenticity, intergenerational resonance, and collective reframing as the core dimensions of narrative healing. The article contends that public narrative environments function as accessible, neighborhood-based sites for emotional reflection and communal growth. By positioning creative materials as a burgeoning field of participatory healing, the framework expands the boundaries of traditional counseling into the digital-artistic public sphere.