Narrating the Cycle of Life

Narrative medicine (NM) is an approach that values the patient's narrative about his/her disease as central to the clinical encounter and helps doctors to be more attentive to their patients' perspectives in the diagnostic and therapeutic process. A curricular change enabled a greater insertion of the humanities in the curriculum of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Brasília in Brasília, Brazil. In this context, NM was incorporated into one of the disciplines of the third semester. During the semester, students are encouraged to write, in small groups, a narrative combining fictional and real aspects of the history of life (and disease) of one patient. In the present article, the authors describe the educational experience of the insertion of NM in the medical curriculum and share personal impressions about the multiple possibilities of this approach.