Narrative medicine has been increasingly advocated as a means of fostering empathy in medical education; however, empirical evidence integrating both effectiveness and processes underlying empathy development remains limited, particularly in non-Western contexts. This study aimed to evaluate the impact of a narrative medicine–based interdisciplinary course on medical students’ empathy and to explore how such an intervention facilitates empathic development. A convergent parallel mixed-methods design was employed in this single-center pilot study. Third-year undergraduate clinical medicine students from Shanghai University (2) enhanced narrative-based communication; (3) emotional resonance and reflective processing; and (4) narrative practices as resources for coping and professional growth. Integration of findings suggests that narrative medicine education may support early cognitive and affective processes related to empathy, with behavioral expressions of compassionate care potentially developing over a longer period. This mixed-methods study found that a structured narrative medicine course was associated with short-term changes in medical students’ self-reported empathy-related attitudes, particularly in cognitive and reflective dimensions. By integrating quantitative outcomes with qualitative insights, the findings highlight empathy as a dynamic process and suggest that incorporating narrative medicine into undergraduate medical education may be beneficial, with behavioral outcomes to be evaluated in future longitudinal studies.
Shen et al. (Tue,) studied this question.