Narrative Medicine

The Narrative Medicine Program is dedicated to exploring the importance of story in the lives of patients, learners, and healthcare professionals. The goal of the program is to challenge participants to rely on narratives to approach, analyze, communicate, and empathize with patients. Ultimately, the experience the participants gain will make their overall medical communication more efficient and clear while increasing the quality of care and understanding for the patient.

Read more about the Narrative Medicine Program's work published in Academic Medicine titled Professional Formation in the Gross Anatomy Lab and Narrative Medicine: An Exploration.

Tinctures of the Arts: Measuring the Effect of Medical Humanities Activities on Empathy, Burnout, and Communication in Students and Other Learners

Our program received a $25,000 AAMC grant to sponsor and facilitate a range of interactive and educational activities, including creative writing and narrative medicine workshops, storytelling events, and a speaker series. We will collaborate with Inprint, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Ben Taub Hospital and the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center.

We hope to improve the education, practice and well-being of physicians through deeper integrative experiences with the arts and humanities As part of these activities, medical students, residents, and other healthcare professionals will 

•  Learn to elicit and write patients’ stories, as well as their own stories of caring for the ill.
• Be introduced to historically marginalized and vulnerable patient populations, including veterans and patients from underprivileged backgrounds who have borne the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic
• Have opportunities to reflect on how to incorporate the humanities into their clinical practice.

The Texas Medical Center’s storytelling hour features stories by doctors, nurses, medical students, undergrads, and others. Off Script is a collaboration between Baylor College of Medicine’s Narrative Medicine Program and the UT Health’s McGovern Center for Humanities and Ethics.

Our next event is about "Caring." Event will be held Oct. 7, 2022. Learn more.

Free Tickets to Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series

We’re inviting all medical students and residents to attend one or several Inprint readings for free—on a first come, first served basis. Each event will feature one or two renowned authors reading from and talking about their new books with a well-known writer. All fall readings will be conducted online via the Inprint “virtual studio,” while spring readings will be held online and in person (details to be announced).

View full schedule and sign up.

Innervations: Humanistic Medicine and Stories from the TMC

This online event series is sponsored by the Baylor College of Medicine Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy and its Narrative Medicine Program; the Medical Humanities Program and Humanities Research Center of the Rice University School of Humanities in collaboration with Humanities Texas; the UT Health McGovern Medical School; the McGovern Center for Humanities and Ethics; the University of Houston Medicine and Society Program; the Texas Woman's University; the organization Inprint, and the Health Museum (the John P. McGovern Museum of Health and Medical Science). Check out our events page for upcoming happenings.