Application of Narrative Medicine in Undergraduate Orthodontics Education

The objective of this study is to incorporate narrative medicine (NM) into undergraduate orthodontics educational courses, evaluate its impact on the empathy levels and professional skills of students, and examine student feedback on the curriculum.

A cohort of 120 fifth-year undergraduate orthodontics students enrolled between June 2023 and June 2024 were selected as participants in the study and randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. Students in the control group received training through traditional teaching methods that combined textbook content with clinical cases. Those in the experimental group received training through an NM-integrated orthodontics curriculum structured around the 5E instructional model: engagement, exploration, explanation, elaboration, and evaluation. The Chinese version of the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy-Student Version (JSPE-S) and the mini clinical evaluation exercise (Mini-CEX) were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the course. In addition, a self-administered questionnaire was used to collect students' feedback on the curriculum.

Upon course completion, students in the experimental group had significantly higher scores in both the JSPE-S and Mini-CEX compared with those in the control group ( P <0.05). The evaluation of the NM-integrated orthodontics course by students in the experimental group was extremely positive, with the majority advocating for its continued implementation.

In this study, the integration of NM into the undergraduate orthodontics curriculum yielded positive educational outcomes, enhancing students' empathy and professional competencies by fostering a more engaging learning environment.