The need for narrative in clinical education

Abstract

This article aims to discuss the need for clinical education to embrace the use of narrative. It discusses the split – most evident in Anglophone countries – between the arts and the sciences, before discussing what can and cannot be known from the scientific method, and what can and cannot be known from narrative approaches. It concludes that narrative is the natural way to teach and learn and has the advantage that it can explore hypothetical situations in safety as well as both to learn and to convey values and attitudes while the hypothetico-deductive method can say what does happen but can shed no light on what should happen.