Narrative medicine in clinical internship teaching practice.

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Clinical Skills Development
• Empathy Training

Background:

• Traditional clinical internships may not adequately foster empathy skills.
• Narrative medicine offers a unique approach to understanding patient experiences.
• There is a need to evaluate innovative teaching methods in undergraduate medical education.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the impact of narrative medicine instruction on empathy skills in medical interns.
• To evaluate student acceptance and perceived benefits of narrative medicine integration.

Main Methods:

• A comparative study involving 100 undergraduate medical students in obstetrics and gynecology.
• Experimental group received narrative medicine integrated with traditional teaching; control group received traditional teaching only.
• Empathy was measured using the Davis Empathy Scale; student acceptance was assessed via questionnaire.

Main Results:

• The experimental group demonstrated significantly higher empathy scores compared to the control group (p < 0.05).
• Students highly rated the narrative medicine course, recognizing its contribution to humanistic medical education.

Conclusions:

• Narrative medicine effectively enhances empathy abilities in undergraduate medical students during clinical practice.
• Integrating narrative medicine into obstetrics and gynecology rotations improves clinical skills and humanistic qualities.