Harika Kottakota, BS

Whitney Arnold, PhD

Background: Narrative medicine (NM) uniquely fosters narrative-based skills to augment pathological understanding of illness within the patient-physician interface. Faced with an increasingly digitized healthcare system, institutions across the nation have integrated NM into medical education. NM builds on humanistic competence that can be applied widely across wellness, health justice, ethics, and communication. Though NM is generally valued as an educational tool, its true impact on student behavior or real clinical encounters remains indeterminate and difficult to assess. How NM can be optimally adapted to different levels of training also remains an active area of scholarship.

Purpose: The HEALS curriculum at David Geffen School of Medicine (DGSOM) aims to train empathetic and compassionate physicians. As of 2021-22, DGSOM has formally incorporated NM into curricula through multiple modalities such as didactics, workshops, close readings, and written reflective assignments. We aimed to create a needs assessment to evaluate the following: where NM is most needed within the HEALS curriculum, how NM aligns with DGSOM students’ interests, perceived effectiveness of current curriculum, and opportunities for fostering student engagement in NM.

Methods: To execute the needs assessment, we developed an anonymous survey to assess current DGSOM students in all years. The survey is designed to take 5-7 minutes to complete. Using a RedCap link, the survey will be distributed to students through multiple channels, including email, social media, flyers, student leaders, and word of mouth. We plan to stratify responses by grade level and degree of prior NM exposure. We will use thematic analysis (free response data) and descriptive statistics (Likert scale, multiple choice questions) to map recommendations to specific curricular areas.

Results: We are pending final approval by the UCLA Institutional Review Board and will distribute the survey to DGSOM students shortly thereafter.