Pharmaceutical care as narrative practice? Rethinking patient-centered care through a pharmacist’s perspective

Illness is a disruptive experience that requires high-quality care. The best evidence-based medical treatment risks losing some of its efficacy, however, when patients feel misunderstood when faced with the complexity of their experiences. They might stop treatment, refuse to disclose relevant information or seek unsound alternatives. A narrative-based approach to health care understands the patient’s case history as a narrative that can be read or analyzed like a story. In other words, this approach honors individual illness experiences through the stories that patients tell. While programs that train ‘narrative competence’ have been successfully implemented in medical education, an application to pharmaceutical training is missing so far. We argue for the necessity to complement evidence-based pharmaceutical practice with narrative-based approaches to ensure high-quality care. Using the perspective of a pharmacist in a case scenario, we exemplify the centrality of “narrative pharmacy” for improving the quality and safety of pharmaceutical health care.