What does this research mean for the field?

Narrative medicine-based education improves residents' procedural skills, empathy, and humanistic communication compared to traditional lecture-based learning, although current evidence is of low certainty. Novelty: ClaimNovelty.SYNTHESIS. Consensus alignment: ConsensusAlignment.NEUTRAL.

What question did this study set out to answer?

Assess the impact of narrative medicine education on residents' academic performance and communication skills.

May 18, 2026Open Access

The effect of narrative medicine-based education on academic performance and humanistic communication in residency training: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Key Points

Assess the impact of narrative medicine education on residents' academic performance and communication skills.
Systematic review and meta-analysis conducted following PRISMA guidelines.
Literature search included multiple databases up to January 26, 2026.
Data extracted from 20 studies with a total of 1,364 residents.
Narrative medicine education improved procedural skill (SMD = 0.98, 95% CI 0.42 to 1.53).
Enhanced humanistic care ability (SMD = 2.62, 95% CI 0.26 to 4.99) and empathy ability (SMD = 1.51, 95% CI 0.76 to 2.26).
Residents showed higher satisfaction with narrative medicine than lecture-based learning (OR = 6.67, 95% CI 1.74 to 25.51).

Abstract

Our study aims to assess the effect of narrative medicine education on academic performance and humanistic communication. We performed a PRISMA guideline-based systematic review and meta-analysis. The literature was searched in PubMed, Embase, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, VIP database and Wanfang database up to January 26, 2026. Two independent reviewers performed the study selection, data extraction and quality assessment. We included 20 studies with 1,364 residents. Meta-analyses showed that compared with lecture-based learning (LBL), the application of narrative medicine was associated with significantly improved procedural skill (SMD = 0.98, 95% CI 0.42 to 1.53), humanistic care ability (SMD = 2.62, 95% CI 0.26 to 4.99), empathy ability (SMD = 1.51, 95% CI 0.76 to 2.26), and doctor-patient communication (SMD = 2.19, 95% CI 0.21 to 4.17). Our study also showed that residents were more satisfied with the narrative medicine education than LBL (OR = 6.67, 95% CI 1.74 to 25.51). In conclusion, this is the first meta-analysis to show that narrative medicine may potentially improve the procedural skills and humanistic communication compared with LBL. However, given the substantial heterogeneity and low-certainty evidence, our findings are insufficient for strong practice recommendations. Further high-quality studies are needed to validate these findings. Systematic review registration: https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/view/CRD420261323721.

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