About the Program
The Narrative Medicine Program, founded in 2016, is offered as part of the school’s MD program curriculum, with additional workshops, events, and activities available to all students, faculty, and staff at the Health System. And beginning Fall 2021, a Graduate Certificate Program in Narrative Medicine is available as well.
The program’s ongoing activities within the MD program curriculum include first-year reflections on anatomy, second- year reflections on wearing a white coat, and third-year academic Friday sessions throughout the year. These third-year sessions give students opportunity to reflect on the profound experiences of their clinical rotations – seeing death for the first time, working to find their roles within different medical teams, confronting stark health disparities among different communities of patients Temple treats. We offer a literature and medicine elective in the fourth year, giving students approaching graduation a chance to reflect on their experiences and training as residency and their lives as physicians draw near.
Extra-curricular activities – available to all – include an annual Story Slam, essay contests, The Pulse literary magazine, and narrative medicine workshops for students, residents, and other members of the community.
We help students and faculty develop their own narratives and essays – and several have been published in leading medical journals and newspapers. Before the pandemic, students hosted and organized the school’s first narrative medicine conference.
Students and professionals with a special interest in narrative medicine and medical humanities can expand their grasp and deepen their understanding with our new Graduate Certificate in Narrative Medicine.
Questions?
Please contact: NarrativeMedicine@temple.edu