Abstract
The purpose of this study is to reconsider some issues of NBM in the illumination of the following three arguments. First, narrative practice is based on storytelling ability or narrative competence, but in NBM, it is often used as merely a skill of history taking and disclosing the inner experience of a patient. Second, medical professionals can easily neglect the negative effect of narrative induced by attentive listening which might be unnecessarily invasive of the patient. Third, the application of NBM tends to require that medical professionals optimistically expect the patient to create a new and desirable narrative, even though a positive one is not always given. Narrative can be modified through storytelling by the patient in accordance with the coherent plot desired by the medical staff. In conclusion, I would like to suggest that the narrative of a patient could be less powerful if medical professionals apply NBM superficially in clinical settings. It is necessary to acknowledge that the relationship between patient and medical staff has only a limited effect even based on narrative approaches. Medical professionals may feel free to listen to the words of the patient, which may be incoherent or fragmentary as they are, without being overly obsessed with NBM.
