Narrative medicine in clinical internship teaching practice

Objective: To explore the effect on empathy skills of integrating narrative medicine instruction into clinical internship undergraduate medical education. Methods: One hundred clinical undergraduate students who were transferred to gynecology and obstetrics in 2016 were selected as subjects and divided into two groups. The control group adopted the traditional practice teaching mode, while the experimental group adopted a narrative medicine integrated with traditional teaching mode. The impact of the narrative medicine course was evaluated using the Davis Empathy Scale, and the students’ acceptance of the course was investigated using a self-developed questionnaire. Results: After completion of the rotation, the empathy scores of the experimental group were higher than those of the control group (p < 0.05). Students in the experimental group rated the integration of narrative medicine into the internship class highly, and most students thought that the narrative medicine course was of great benefit with respect to the humanistic quality of medical teaching. Conclusion: The application of narrative medicine teaching in the clinical practice teaching of obstetrics and gynecology promoted students to improve their empathy ability.