A Way Forward in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Making the Case for Narrative Competence in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine

Each surge of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic presented new challenges to pulmonary and critical care practitioners. Although some of the initial challenges were somewhat less acute, clinicians now are left to face the physical, emotional, and mental toll of the past 2 years. The pandemic revealed a need for a more varied skillset, including space for reflection, tolerance of uncertainty, and humanism. These skills can assist clinicians who are left to heal from the difficulty of caring for patients in the absence of families who were excluded from the intensive care unit, public distrust of vaccines, and morgues overtaken by our patients. As pulmonary and critical care medicine practitioners and educators, we believe that cultivating practices, pedagogies, and institutional structures that foster narrative competence, “the ability to acknowledge, absorb, interpret, and act on the stories and plights of others,” in our ourselves, our trainees, and our colleagues, may provide a productive way forward. In addition to fostering needed skills, this practice can promote necessary healing as well. This perspective introduces the practice of narrative competence, provides evidence of support for its implementation, and suggests opportunities for curricular integration.