Untold Stories: An Intervention to Rekindle Empathy in Medicine

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Health Humanities
• Interprofessional Education

Background:

• Empathy is crucial in graduate medical education (GME) but challenging to maintain due to competing demands.
• Few theory-informed interventions exist to foster empathy in GME and interprofessional settings.
• Medical humanities can promote reflection and perspective-taking.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate a visual arts and narrative medicine workshop.
• Assess the workshop's acceptability and feasibility for physicians, students, and staff.
• Enhance empathy and patient perspective-taking in healthcare professionals.

Main Methods:

• A 60-90 minute workshop integrated patient narratives, portraits, and clinical records.
• Grounded in the PRISM model and Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS).
• Facilitated structured reflection on patient cases across 6 settings with 156 participants.

Main Results:

• 90.4% of participants agreed the workshop promoted empathy; 92.3% felt it would positively influence patient care.
• Residents reported high agreement (94.7% for empathy, 89.5% for care influence).
• Open-ended feedback highlighted multidisciplinary benefits and viewing patients as whole individuals.

Conclusions:

• A theory-informed, humanities-based workshop is acceptable and feasible for diverse healthcare learners.
• The intervention effectively enhances empathy and perspective-taking in GME settings.
• The workshop is adaptable for undergraduate medical education and ongoing GME programs.