Teaching Medical Humanities through an Illness Narrative

There has been growing interest regarding the 'medical humanities' in most medical schools in Korea. Medical humanities is an interdisciplinary field of humanities, social science, and the arts that aims to have a critical or supplementary role in medical education and practice. Thus, diverse educational methods should be applied to achieve the goals of medical humanities. The illness narrative is one of the most powerful tools in this context. An illness narrative is a patient's story about his illness, including the meaning of the illness in his life. The illness narrative is widely accepted as an effective educational tool in medical humanities. But, in Korea, there has been concern about the nature, theoretical background, and usefulness of the illness narrative. Medical students and doctors can obtain empathy and clinical wisdom through telling, hearing, reading, and writing illness narratives. In this article, I will examine the nature and meaning of illness narratives in teaching medical humanities and discuss several examples of narrative training programs.