Pharmacists' empathy after a postgraduate course in narrative medicine: an observational study.

Background: Narrative medicine is a recent cross-disciplinary approach which through aesthetic activities such as reading fiction and creative writing aims to encourage empathy, reflection, professionalism, and trustworthiness in the encounter between patients and health care professionals.

Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate changes in level of empathy after a postgraduate course in narrative medicine among pharmacists conducting medication counselling.

Method: During 2020-2021, three courses in narrative medicine among pharmacists with the aim to enhance empathy were held in Odense, Denmark.

[Narrative medicine as a new, interdisciplinary field].

This article presents narrative medicine as a new field of medical humanities. Narrative medicine has become influential over the world as well as in Denmark in recent years. Narrative medicine aims to counter the often reductionist way patients are perceived and treated in biomedicine and argues for the importance of seeing and hearing patients in the clinical practice as whole, complex persons.