Writing, Narrative, and Educational Care
Medical Humanities in the Digital Age
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4454/graphos.124Keywords:
Medical Humanities, digital storytelling, empathy, narrative literacy, ethics, and pedagogyAbstract
This paper explores the transformative role of Medical Humanities in the digital age, highlighting the evolution of storytelling through both traditional and digital tools. The analysis focuses on how digital platforms have democratized writing, making narratives of health and illness accessible to a broader audience. This shift has fostered greater empathy and understanding between patients and healthcare professionals but has also raised ethical concerns, such as privacy protection and the risk of misinformation. The integration of digital technologies into storytelling allows for a combination of reflective depth and innovation, creating new opportunities in healthcare education and clinical practice. However, challenges arise regarding the superficiality of synthetic languages and inequalities in access to digital tools. The paper proposes a synergistic and multidisciplinary approach aimed at enhancing the strengths of both traditional and digital writing, addressing individuals in all their unique nuances and specificities. It advocates for a narrative literacy that harmonizes empathy and innovation, communication and transformation, information and education. This synergy represents a pathway toward a training process designed to improve and ensure the care relationship, ethical and inclusive storytelling, and the achievement of a balanced well-being across all aspects of a person’s life.
References
Balint, M. (1957). The Doctor, His Patient and the Illness. Internatio-nal Universities Press.
Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print. Routledge.
Carr, N. (2010). The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. W. W. Norton & Company.
Charon, R. (2006). Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness. Oxford University Press.
Charon, R., DasGupta, S., Hermann, N., Irvine, C., Marcus, E. R., &
Colón, E. R. (2017). The principles and practice of narrative medicine. Academic Medicine, 92(3), 292-295.
Cook, D. A., Erwin, P. J., & Triola, M. M. (2012). Computerized vir-tual patients in health professions education: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Academic Medicine, 87(8), 1080-1087.
DasGupta, S. (2014). Narrative humility. The Lancet, 383(9922), 109.
Diekelmann, N. (2001). Narrative pedagogy: Heideggerian hermeneu-tical analyses of lived experiences of students, teachers, and clini-cians. Advances in Nursing Science, 23(3), 53-71.
Gorini, A., Gaggioli, A., & Riva, G. (2018). ICHealth: Promoting digi-tal health literacy in Europe. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 20(6), e205.
Greenhalgh, T. (2018). How to Implement Evidence-Based Healthca-re. Wiley-Blackwell.
Greenhalgh, T., & Hurwitz, B. (1999). Why study narrative? BMJ, 318(7175), 48-50.
Hicks, T. (2009). The Digital Writing Workshop. Heinemann.
Hinton, J. (2019). "Social Media and Health Narratives: Opportunities and Challenges." Journal of Digital Health, 5(2), 34-45.
James, K. H., & Engelhardt, L. (2012). The effects of handwriting ex-perience on functional brain development in pre-literate children. Trends in Neuroscience and Education, 1(1), 32-42.
Kiefer, M., & Pennington, B. (2017). Digital learning in schools: The impact on handwriting and cognitive development. Educational Research Review, 21, 42-50.
Lupton, D. (2021). Data Selves: More-than-Human Perspectives. Poli-ty Press.
Mezirow, J. (1978). Perspective transformation. Adult Education Quar-terly, 28(2), 100-110.
Mezirow, J. (2016). La teoria dell'apprendimento trasformativo: Impa-rare a pensare come un adulto (F. Cappa & G. Del Negro, a cura di). Milano: Raffaello Cortina Editore.
Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. J . (2006). Technological pedagogical con-tent knowledge: A framework for teacher knowledge. Teachers College Record, 108(6), 1017-1054.
Mueller, P. A., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking. Psychological Science, 25(6), 1159-1168.
Ribble, M. (2011). Digital Citizenship in Schools: Nine Elements All Students Should Know. ISTE.
Sandhu, S., Weisner, K., & Stewart, D. (2017). Using patient narrati-ves to improve care: Case studies and lessons learned. Healthcare Quarterly, 20(4), 56-62.
Shirky, C. (2008). Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. Penguin Books.
Sibilio M. (2023) La semplessità. Proprietà e principi per agire il cam-biamento, Orso blu, Editrice Morcelliana, Brescia.
Smith, J., Brown, A., & Taylor, C. (2019). Integrating traditional and digital writing practices in schools: A European perspective. Jour-nal of Educational Technology, 15(4), 203-217.
Ventola, C. L. (2014). "Social Media and Health Care Professionals: Benefits, Risks, and Best Practices." Pharmacy and Therapeutics, 39(7), 491-499.
Ventres, W. (2019). Social Media and the Medical Profession: Friend or Foe? Family Medicine and Community Health, 7(2), e000138.
World Health Organization. (1993). Life skills education in children and adolescents in schools: Introduction and guidelines to facilitate the development and implementation of life skills programmes. WHO.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Marco Paglialonga, Cristiana Simonetti

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.