Impact of narrative medicine program on improving reflective capacity and empathy of medical students in Iran

Narrative medicine is expressing medical experiences and reflecting on narratives to create empathic communication with patients. Moreover, reflection on narratives causes self-awareness and recognition of the narrator's feelings or the main character of the story, and affect the audience. This study conducted to examine the impact of the narrative medicine program on improving the reflective capacity and empathy of medical students.

A quasi-experimental study was performed in 2018-2019 at Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Iran for 135 medical interns with two groups (control (n=66) and experiment (n=69)). We held seven two-hour reflective practice sessions for medical interns in the experiment group, and no educational intervention for the control group. Pre-test and post-test were held for both of the groups using two valid and reliable tools to assess reflective capacity and empathy. A comparison of mean scores of reflection and empathy was done in pre-test and post-test in one group and between groups using t-paired and t-test (p≤ 0.05).

The mean score of reflection and empathy in the experiment group had a significant increase before and after the educational intervention, but in the control group had not. Moreover, the comparison of the mean scores between the two groups in the post-test was significant. (p<0.001).

Narrative medicine is an effective teaching method that can improve reflective capacity and empathy, and ultimately promote professionalism as a core competency in medicine. Consideration of learning conditions and interdisciplinary teaching is necessary for implementing the narrative medicine program.