Narrative Medicine Curriculum Introductory Session Activity

1. Storytelling and Receiving activity

Students divide into pairs: Story-teller, Story-receiver.

Story-teller: Tells a personal story, something important that happened to them.

Story-receiver: Attends fully, paying attention to non-verbal language, story flow, emotions behind story. Does not interrupt narrative flow.

Story-receiver: Writes their version of story, goal to capture essence. Reads back to Story-teller word for word.

2. Faculty Debrief.

Story-tellers, what was it like to tell your story?

How was this same/different from normal conversations? In taking a history from a patient?

Story-receivers, what was it like to receive the story?

How was this same/different from normal conversations? In taking a history from a patient?

Story-receivers, what was it like to write the story?

Easy? Difficult?

Story-tellers, what was it like to hear the story your Story-receiver read?

Narrative Medicine Script (optional)

Hello, my name is ___. I’m a medical student and if it’s all right with you, I’d like to spend a few minutes with you doing an activity that will help me and your doctors understand how your illness affects you. It will involve you telling me your story of what it’s like being ill while I listen. Then, I’ll write down the story I heard and let you hear it to see if I got it right.

For five minutes,I’ll have you tell me your story of being ill. It can be whatever you are feeling right now – whatever you would like to get off your chest. During that time, I’m going to give you my full attention and just concentrate on what you are saying.

I’ll write down what I heard you say and then read the story back to you.

Prompts to help guide the conversation if needed.

What are your thoughts about your illness?

What does it mean to you to be going through this?

How this this illness affected, changed, or solidified who you are as a person?

How has this illness affected your emotions?

What are your hopes? Fears?

(Write your story, then read it back to the patient.)

Thank you again for spending some time with me, and I encourage you to share feelings like this with your doctors and nurses and let them know what's on your mind.

Focus Group Moderator’s Guide

Introduction:Hello. My name is ____ and I’ll be your moderator today. I am not involved with your clerkship and will not disclose to the clerkship directors whether or not you participated today.

1 min.The purpose of this discussion is to talk about your experience with the narrative medicine activity. I will be asking about how you feel the activity impacted you, your patient, and ways the activity might be changed for the future.

Ground Rules:I am interested in what each of you has to say. There are no right or wrong answers.

2 min.Feel free to make comments good or bad about anything that comes up in the discussion. Before we begin, I’d like to cover a few simple ground rules:

  1. The session will last until 1pm.
  2. The session is being tape recorded so I do not have to take notes. There is no hidden camera or anything else to identify you. The tape recording will be transcribed but will not identify who you are.
  3. I need all of you to talk, but you don’t each have answer every question.
  4. Please talk one at a time in a loud voice and please avoid side conversations with your neighbors.
  5. Please feel free to ask each other questions as well as respond to mine.
  6. Say exactly what you think. There are no right or wrong answers---we are looking for different points of view. Feel free to make negative comments as well as positive ones.

Patient’s response (15 min):How did your patient respond to this activity?

  1. During his/her story- telling
  2. During the hearing of your version of their story?

Student response: Now please think about your response to the activity.

15 min1. How did you feel during the activity?

  1. While attentively listening
  2. While writing their story
  3. While reading the story back
  1. How do you feel the activity changed your relationship with your patient, if at all?
  1. How did it change your subsequent care of the patient (if you were following the patient), if at all?
  1. What did you learn?

Feedback:Now I want to ask you about your feedback on the activity.

15min. 1. What was helpful about this activity?

  1. What was easy about this activity?
  2. What was hard about this activity?
  3. What would have made this activity better?
  4. What surprised you?
  5. How will you use what you learned from doing this in the future, if at all?

Close:I want to thank you for participating in this discussion. I have just three more questions:

5 min.

1. What did you learn in this discussion that was new for you?

2. Is there anything else you would like to share about your experience?

3. Do you have any questions?

Thank you for being here today. We are continuing to hold discussion groups with each rotation of students, so I would appreciate it if you did not share anything with other students because it might bias what they say.