Integrating Narrative Medicine Through Story-Telling: A Feasibility Study in a Community Medicine Curriculum for Undergraduate and Postgraduate Students.

Introduction The routine curriculum of community medicine includes clinico-social case-taking with a focus on the physical, biological, and psychosocial determinants of health. There is an opportunity to integrate narrative medicine with this for undergraduate and postgraduate medical students using story-telling. The objective of the current study was to assess its feasibility, challenges, and opportunities. Methods We conducted a need assessment cross-sectional survey of the teaching faculty of community medicine across India using Google Forms. Considering an 80% positive response in a pilot within the department, a relative error of 10%, and a 20% non-response rate, the sample size was 120. The questionnaire included closed-ended questions with a Likert scale that dealt with affective, cognitive, and communication domains and open-ended questions for insights into opportunities and challenges. The results of the former were expressed as descriptive statistics, in frequencies and proportions. Open-ended questions were summarized to guide the refinement of further implementation. Results Of the 120 participants, 92 (77%) quoted low/medium empathy quotient in students, and 107 (89.2%) felt that the listening skills of students can improve with the introduction of story-telling. A hundred and twelve (93.4%) participants felt that their history-taking skills can improve with story-telling, and all agreed that the language of medicine can be improved. One hundred nine (90.8%) felt that it will lead to better student-patient interaction. Opportunities included a better understanding of social determinants, patient-/family-centered care, improved communication skills, and better mental health. The key challenges included time, motivation, the need for training/capacity building, and streamlining of assessment metrics. Conclusion We conclude that story-telling may help medical students investigate various social determinants of health, disease, and lived environments that create vulnerabilities.

A brief psycho-social intervention for COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among perinatal women in low-and middle-income countries: Need of the hour.

COVID-19 vaccines are one of the most effective strategies for preventing COVID-19 infection, as well as the associated mortality and morbidity. Despite the availability of COVID-19 vaccines, vaccine acceptance among perinatal women is challenging in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). Further, the vaccine hesitancy among perinatal women may have an impact on their children's vaccinations. The purpose of this paper is to briefly discuss the existing research on COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, psychosocial aspects, measures, and the individual level interventions for vaccine hesitancy among perinatal women. In our opinion, there is a need for further research with a specific focus on developing effective and feasible individual-level interventions to address COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among perinatal women in LMICs.