1. Why I chose to teach in this Master’s program and what, in my view, makes it distinctive today
The truth is that before teaching in this Master’s program, I experienced it as a student. And it changed me. It was a turning point not only professionally, but deeply on a personal level. It gave me the tools to “bring order” to my professional skills and offered me not only a new way of being alongside patients, but also a new way of being alongside myself: as a doctor, and as a woman.
Teaching in the Master’s program today is a way of giving something back for what I received. What makes it distinctive, I believe, is precisely this: it is not a program that simply fills you with knowledge; it is one that provides you with the cultural and practical tools to truly connect—first with yourself, then with the people in front of you, and with the deeper meaning of your profession.
2. My teaching experience and the impact observed in participants
When I enter the classroom, I don’t bring only content: I bring my experience, my questions, and also my vulnerabilities. I try to offer learners practical insights, because I believe that narrative medicine becomes truly transformative only when it leaves the pages of books and enters the daily “interweaving” between our own Story and the Stories of the people we encounter.
During my teaching hours, I speak about narrative as a tool for cohesion and social understanding—about how a story, when listened to with the right competence, can mend what haste, bureaucracy, and the fatigue of healthcare systems have torn apart. And we talk about small, concrete gestures: how to ask the right question, how to respect silence, how to value a sentence, how to use a page of reflective writing at the end of a difficult day.
What I see happening in participants moves me every time. They arrive tired, sometimes uncertain about what to expect, and over the course of the program something inevitably reopens within them. Learners write to me—even long after the program—to tell me how, after the Master’s, they have changed their understanding of “Care,” how they have begun to use reflective writing, how they have become able “to stay with pain” or even simply with the “ambiguity” of everyday experience.
3. The contribution of narrative medicine to health and social services, and the future of health
I truly believe that narrative medicine is one of the most concrete paths we have to make healthcare once again fair and responsive to individual needs. Developing narrative competence means making better diagnoses, building stronger alliances, preventing errors and disputes, and caring also for those who provide care.
I imagine—and hope for—a future in which Narrative is not an “extra” left to individual sensitivity, but a recognized skill, taught and integrated into education and services. A future in which stories, collected and safeguarded, become tools for social cohesion: bridges between patients, professionals, families, and communities. A healthcare system that knows how to listen is one that heals better—and a society that knows how to listen is one that remains cohesive, grounded in mutual respect and support.