NDLI: Clinical realism: a new literary genre and a potential tool for encouraging empathy in medical students

Content Provider	Springer Nature : BioMed Central
Author	McDonald, Paula Ashton, Katy Barratt, Rachel Doyle, Simon Imeson, Dorrie Meir, Amos Risser, Gregoire
Abstract	Background Empathy has been re-discovered as a desirable quality in doctors. A number of approaches using the medical humanities have been advocated to teach empathy to medical students. This paper describes a new approach using the medium of creative writing and a new narrative genre: clinical realism. Methods Third year students were offered a four week long Student Selected Component (SSC) in Narrative Medicine and Creative Writing. The creative writing element included researching and creating a character with a life-changing physical disorder without making the disorder the focus of the writing. The age, gender, social circumstances and physical disorder of a character were randomly allocated to each student. The students wrote repeated assignments in the first person, writing as their character and including details of living with the disorder in all of their narratives. This article is based on the work produced by the 2013 cohort of students taking the course, and on their reflections on the process of creating their characters. Their output was analysed thematically using a constructivist approach to meaning making. Results This preliminary analysis suggests that the students created convincing and detailed narratives which included rich information about living with a chronic disorder. Although the writing assignments were generic, they introduced a number of themes relating to illness, including stigma, personal identity and narrative wreckage. Some students reported that they found it difficult to relate to “their” character initially, but their empathy for the character increased as the SSC progressed. Conclusion Clinical realism combined with repeated writing exercises about the same character is a potential tool for helping to develop empathy in medical students and merits further investigation.
Related Links	https://bmcmededuc.biomedcentral.com/counter/pdf/10.1186/s12909-015-0372-8.pdf
Ending Page	10
Page Count	10
Starting Page	1
File Format	HTM / HTML
ISSN	14726920
DOI	10.1186/s12909-015-0372-8
Journal	BMC Medical Education
Issue Number	1
Volume Number	15
Language	English
Publisher	BioMed Central
Publisher Date	2015-07-03
Access Restriction	Open
Subject Keyword	Medical Education Theory of Medicine Bioethics Medical humanities Creative writing Empathy Affinity Clinical realism Theory of Medicine/Bioethics
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Education Medicine
Journal Impact Factor	2.7/2023
5-Year Journal Impact Factor	3.4/2023

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1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
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4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
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Clinical realism: a new literary genre and a potential tool for encouraging empathy in medical students

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