main content Northwest Narrative Medicine Collaborative

Narrative Medicine Skills Training

With support from the Mellon Foundation, Northwest Narrative Medicine Collaborative (NWNMC) is developing Narrative Medicine Skills Training.

Narrative Medicine Skills Training introduces the narrative medicine principles of attention, representation, and affiliation and develops participant skills of listening and witnessing. We will reflect on how listening and witnessing can be applied to stories of health, illness and healing in diverse healthcare settings to improve care and support healing.

Narrative Medicine Skills Training Registration is closed. Thank you for registering! 

Who is Training for?

• Students entering, studying, or considering the health professions
• Healthcare professionals, faculty and staff curious about the practice of narrative medicine
• Folks living with health conditions as patients or caregivers

In-person and interactive, this workshop encourages exploration, curiosity, and discussion in large and small groups, pairs, and mixed cohorts of students, healthcare professionals, and community members interested in the practice of narrative medicine. There will be opportunities to listen, read, write reflectively, and time to share writing if participants choose. Adequate breaks and restoration periods are included, as is lunch!

We are strengthened individually when we do this work in community–all are welcome.

Not sure if you see yourself on this list? Other questions? Reach out to Alexis Rehrmann 

When

Narrative Medicine Skills Training

Saturday, February 22, 2025

Training Schedule

Cost

$ 150.00 Health Care Community General Registration (Healthcare Professionals, Faculty, Staff)

$ 50.00 Non-LC Student Registration (*Non-LC Undergrads, Grad Students, Residents, Medical Scribes). Student registration costs cover food and materials. 

$0.00 Lewis & Clark Undergraduate Student Registration and costs are covered by the Center for Community and Global Health.  

All registration funds go directly to our community partner, Northwest Narrative Medicine Collaborative. Payment is completed in the registration form above.

A limited number of scholarships are available for those who are unable to afford the cost of registration. Please contact Alexis Rehrmann to request one.

Narrative Medicine Skills Training participants will learn to:

• Define and practice the narrative medicine principles of attention, representation and affiliation
• Strengthen their narrative medicine skills.
• Reflect on how narrative medicine practice can build systems of trust 
• Explore narrative medicine applications in diverse settings.

Equity & Inclusion Actions

• Racial equity and justice lens is directly expressed
• Patient narratives are centered
• Positionality Reflections are included

• Fall '22 Narrative Scribe Training included Interstitium storytellers featured in a hybrid performance over Zoom and in-person on the LC campus.

Program Findings: Narrative Scribe Training Year 3

We carried out NWNMC’s third Narrative Scribe Training on February 11, 2023. This year, 60 participants registered for the training and 46 participated. L&C undergraduates were drawn from courses in Narrative Medicine, Public Health, Medical Anthropology, and Psychology. We also welcomed community members, health professionals, faculty and students from partner institutions in the Pacific Northwest (NW5C). Post-training feedback was completed by 24 participants and showed strong evidence of having achieved the learning objectives.

narrative scribe training

Listen to This: A Poem

You don’t have to be ready,
 but you can be loved…

A poem spoken into collective being by Narrative Scribes at Lewis & Clark College, February 11, 2023 and scribed by Alexis Rehrmann.

narrative scribe training, nwnmc

Learning to Listen to Patient’s Stories

Narrative medicine programs teach doctors and other caregivers “sensitive interviewing skills” and the art of “radical listening” to improve patient care. The New York Times reports in this story that narrative medicine is now taught in some form at roughly 80 percent of medical schools in the United States.

narrative scribe training

How Doctors Use stories to Cope with COVID

Narrative Medicine is a discipline in which doctors and nurses use the principles of literature and art to better understand patients’ stories and incorporate them into their practices, by asking many questions and carefully listening to their patient’s answers. 

In Los Angeles, Narrative Medicine is now being taught at USC Keck School of Medicine and at the new Kaiser Permanente medical school.

Read the LA Times coverage

collaboration, interdisciplinary, narrative scribe training

Bringing Empathy to Health Care Through Narrative Scribe Training

L&C’s Center for Community and Global Health offers Narrative Scribe Training, which emphasizes the importance of listening and storytelling to health care teams.

narrative scribe training

“Salud, to your Health!” NEH Grant Awarded to Daena Goldsmith

narrative scribe training

Narrative Medicine: The Lost Art Of Active Listening

Narrative medicine is the practice of listening, absorbing, metabolizing and being moved to action by stories of wellness and disease. When put into practice, this involves treating a patient as a whole person, rather than just as their illness.

Read the full story by Aidan D’Anna on the LC Pioneer Log.

community engagement, inside-out, narrative scribe training, WAP

VIDEO: How the Humanities Can Save Humanity

Panel Discussion Presented by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

In celebration of National Arts and Humanities Month (#NAHM), Elizabeth Alexander, president of the Mellon Foundation, moderated a wide-ranging discussion with artists Mel Chin and Allison Janae Hamilton and writer-photographer Emily Raboteau about how the humanities are tackling the interconnected challenges of climate change, public health, and racial injustice, among other pressing social justice issues.

The Lewis & Clark College Center for Community and Global Health is supported in part by a Mellon Foundation grant, Healing Social Suffering Through Narrative. 

community engagement, narrative scribe training, nwnmc

Connect with the Northwest Narrative Medicine Collaborative

The Northwest Narrative Medicine Collaborative welcomes patients, health care professionals, clinicians, caregivers, writers, artists, and scholars in the practice of Narrative Medicine. 

community engagement, health studies, narrative scribe training, nwnmc

Listen to This: A Collective Poem

health studies, health-professions, narrative scribe training

A Once-in-a-Century Crisis Can Help Educate Doctors