Healthcare Quality and Narrative Medicine

Healthcare has been one of the most vital endeavors in human life during the entire history of humanity. In the past two millennia, all efforts and expertise are put into healthcare in order to maintain human beings in healthy condition. While the science and technology in medical field has advanced incredibly, some serious issues remain as problems in healthcare activities that need attention. Two issues that have been researched and discussed in the literature during the past century are quality and ethical problems in healthcare. Parallel to these issues is a new branch of research, called medical humanities, which attempts to emphasize the subjective experience of patients within the objective and scientific world of medicine, where literature plays a major role to influence and enrich medical practice. In this paper, we try to summarize basic types of human errors, medical malpractices, causes of quality problems, and ethical issues in healthcare systems. We also try to present our views on healthcare quality and ethics and their relations to narrative medicine with an attempt to discourse the prospects of improving healthcare quality through narrative medicine. Keywords: Healthcare quality, healthcare errors, medical ethics, medical humanities, narrative medicine