Narrative medicine program for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities: a co-learning model with interprofessional students

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.36834/cmej.81969

Abstract

Adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDDs) experience persistent communication barriers in healthcare, limiting their autonomy and participation. Narrative medicine is a clinical approach that centres patients’ stories to inform and enable more humanistic care. CREATE (Cultivating Reflection, Empathy, and Awareness in Telling Experiences) adapts narrative medicine principles to an arts-based workshop for adults with IDDs to enhance communication for both participants and healthcare student facilitators. By engaging trainees directly with patient narratives in community settings, CREATE provides a replicable model for inclusive, patient-centered medical education and care.

References

1. Shady K, Phillips S, Newman S. Barriers and facilitators to healthcare access in adults with intellectual and developmental disorders and communication difficulties: An integrative review. Rev J Autism Dev Disord. 2024;11(1):39–51. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40489-022-00324-8

2. Guthrie E, Charon R. Disability and narrative medicine: Challenges and opportunities. Dev Med Child Neurol. 2024;66(2):149–54. https://doi.org/10.1111/dmcn.15685

3. Palla I, Turchetti G, Polvani S. Narrative medicine: Theory, clinical practice and education - a scoping review. BMC Health Serv Res. 2024;24(1):1116. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-024-11530-x

4. Hoang AQ, Lerman DC, Nguyen JT. Virtual training of medical students to promote the comfort and cooperation of patients with neurodevelopmental disabilities. J Autism Dev Disord. 2024;54(4):1249-63. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-023-05896-w

5. Okoye K, Hosseini S. Wilcoxon statistics in R: signed-rank test and rank-sum test. In: R Programming. Singapore: Springer; 2024. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-3385-9_13

Downloads

Published

2026-01-19

Issue

Section

You Should Try This