A Shared Repository: Integrating Narrative Literature in Clinical Ethics Education

Abstract: In health education, narrative literature is a recognized tool that helps students learn important values, like empathy and close listening, that are crucial in clinical spaces prior to patient exposure. Despite its use in health professional education, there is little integration into clinical ethics education. Certain core competencies, identified by the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, (such as “moral reasoning”) are important in learning how to conduct meaningful ethics consultations but are difficult to develop without practical experience. Bioethics graduate students pursuing clinical ethics careers, who do not have practical experience opportunities, would benefit from engagement with narrative literature to learn clinical skills responsive to real-life experiences. To support integration, I have started a shared repository for clinical ethics educators that ties narrative literature works to clinical values.

In this presentation, I will share how this repository was created by identifying why certain works were selected, how themes and concepts from the works link to specific competencies, and why a repository can be a valuable asset to graduate-level clinical ethics education. For example, an important goal in clinical ethics consultation is building principled ethical resolutions. In the repository, a clinical ethicist can communicate how works like Paul Kalanithi’s memoir "When Breath Becomes Air" or Samuel Shem’s satirical "The House of God" helped facilitate conflict resolution by teaching how to integrate isolated phenomena within the context of other stories. This repository offers an approach to enrich graduate-level clinical ethics education, bridging the gap between the health humanities and practical experience.

Keywords: health humanities, narrative literature, clinical ethics education