I’ve recently been accepted into Columbia University’s MS program in Narrative Medicine. From Columbia’s website: Narrative Medicine introduces an interdisciplinary field that brings powerful narrative skills of radical listening and creativity from the humanities and the arts to address the needs of all who seek and deliver healthcare. It enables patients and caregivers to voice their experience, to be heard, to be recognized, and to be valued, improving the delivery of healthcare. This evolving transdisciplinary field of inquiry addresses issues of structural inequality and social justice in healthcare.

The Master of Science in Narrative Medicine prepares health professionals, writers, and scholars to apply the skills and values of narrative understanding to improve outcomes for both patients and caregivers. It offers a rigorous and in-depth study of close reading of creative texts, illness and disability narratives, narrative ethics, philosophy, creative writing, and other perspectives. 

This flagship graduate program is the first of its kind. In the early 2000s, a group of scholars, clinicians, and writers joined to think systematically about the benefit of close reading in improving healthcare. The original group included internist and literary scholar Rita Charon; pediatrician, scholar, writer, and activist Sayantani DasGupta; literary and film scholar Maura Spiegel; philosopher Craig Irvine; novelist David Plante (replaced by novelist Nellie Hermann when Plante moved from New York); psychoanalyst Eric Marcus, and others. Intersubjectivity, social justice, embodiment, relationality, reflexivity, creativity, and doubt were the signal concepts of the group’s work, while close reading and creative writing became signature methods. Out of this collaboration arose a systematic and coherent set of principles and practices which form the basis for the M.S. in Narrative Medicine program. Since then, the field has continued to evolve, welcoming scholars, creators, and practitioners who are dedicated to this work. In 2017, several faculty members co-authored The Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine, published by Oxford University Press, which brings together the theoretical constructs of the field, as well as practical knowledge culled from over a decade of education, research, workshops, and collaborative thinking that has crystallized the goals and methods of narrative medicine. There are now many narrative medicine programs worldwide, and Columbia Narrative Medicine faculty and graduates work to encourage these efforts, sharing our methods and engaging in further productive collaboration.