Using patient narratives as source material for creative writing

Abstract

Patient and carer involvement in medical education has been shown to lead to improved outcomes. There is a vast amount of online narrative material describing the lived experience of patients that could be systematically used in medical education. This chapter describes a creative writing module which encourages students to research and create a fictional character with a chronic disorder and then write about them in the new narrative genre of clinical realism. This genre is defined as ‘fictional writing where health problems are systematically represented, not as a metaphor, not as a plot point, and not as the central topic of the writing, but as a part of a character’s personal identity and day-to-day experience.’ The students reported that by writing repeatedly about the same character, they felt more empathic towards them, even if they initially felt little affinity with the character. This chapter discusses the practicalities and benefits of running the course.