Narrative Medicine: Perioperative Opportunities and Applicable Health Services Research Methods

Narrative medicine is a humanities-based discipline that posits that attention to the patient narrative and the collaborative formation of a narrative between the patient and provider is essential for the provision of health care. In this Special Article, we review the basic theoretical constructs of the narrative medicine discipline and apply them to the perioperative setting. We frame our discussion around the 4 primary goals of the current iteration of the perioperative surgical home: enhancing patient-centered care, embracing shared decision making, optimizing health literacy, and avoiding futile surgery. We then examine the importance of incorporating narrative medicine into medical education and residency training and evaluate the literature on such narrative medicine didactics. Finally, we discuss applying health services research, specifically qualitative and mixed methods, in the rigorous evaluation of the efficacy and impact of narrative medicine clinical programs and medical education curricula.