Table 1 The narrative medicine (NM) programme activities in 5th -year clerkship and additional programme in integrating social media into the programme practice

Activity 1

The protocol for the narrative medicine (NM) program intervention (focussing on narrative writing) began with a typical lecture explaining the theory and introducing the narrative process. This activity was integrated as a one-hour session into the curriculum of Internal Medicine for Medical Clerkship in the first 2 weeks.

Activity 2

A NM workshop for clinical teachers. This workshop was held twice a year, and it covers the Brown Educational Guide to the Analysis of Narrative (BEGAN): a framework for enhancing the educational impact of faculty feedback on students’ reflective writing.

Activity 3

In this session during the clerkship of internal medicine for 12 weeks, medical students were invited to talk about clinical stories in their narrative writing assignments in different styles, such as storytelling or poetry-reading. This activity was designed to enhance humanism sensitivity among medical students by enabling them to recognize, interpret, and be moved into action by the problems of others. Through narrative writing, medical students could review their clerkship experiences, and they can rethink and reflect on the stories they gathered from patients. One of the objectives of the course is the opportunity for medical students to set their cognitive knowledge and skills in patient-physician communication into practice, thus facilitating a better understanding of patients and themselves. Professionalism teaching activity by nominal group technique will also be held.

Activity 4

This comprises a small group discussion among six to eight medical students and one clinical teacher facilitator in the final 2 weeks. In this one-hour activity, each student reads his/her narrative writing assignment, reflects on the experiences of their patient encounters and receives feedback from peers and the facilitator. The performance of each student was assessed through the adapted version of the Reflection Evaluation For Learners’ Enhanced Competencies Tool (REFLECT) guidelines.

Additional Activity

To implement the integration of social media – Facebook – into the NM programme, each week, the teacher and research members have posted some materials in the Facebook. The content of material posted by teachers on Facebook include students’ narrative stories, teachers’ responses, and humanities materials, et al. The students were invited into the Facebook Narrative Medicine group in a close system and encouraged to left comments and engage in the online interaction and discussion with the teachers and classmates without compulsion.