Medical professionalism education using patient narratives: Narrative and empathy

Abstract

While excellence, humanism, accountability, and altruism are key elements of professionalism in healthcare, empathy is an important component of humanism. A typical definition of empathy by medical professionals is “a cognitive attribute that involves an understanding of the inner experiences and perspectives of the patient, combined with a capability to communicate this understanding to the patient”. How medical education can cultivate empathy in learners is a major challenge. The key to empathy education is narrative competence, which is the ability to apply the patient’s narrative of illness to medical care. As a method of utilizing patient narratives, there is a patient narrative database called DIPEx, which can be viewed on the Internet. It is also important to train “patient storytellers”, patients who can talk and share their experiences. In case studies where DIPEx videos and patient storytellers were used in a class, students came closer to understanding the suffering and psychology of patients, suggesting the possibility of cultivating empathy.