In Brazil, medical students usually belong to small families, from upper socio-economic classes, and have a history of high academic achievement. This background is often associated with a relative lack of social experiences and fewer opportunities to reflect on losses or failure situations. Although students enter the course with positive expectations, when in contact with human suffering, many of them choose to move away from their patients' emotions.

In general, the ability to communicate with patients is addressed in traditional classes focused on behavioral rules, which are inefficient in dealing with the real difficulties our students are facing. At this point, students need to reflect on how to be communicative in fact, not only to behave as being communicative.

To deal with this issue, we have developed a course based on different aspects of human communication.

Students accepted the activities very well and participated actively during the classes. More than two thirds of them (68%) chose to produce non-descriptive narratives such as short stories, poetry, cartoons, paintings and drawings. Students demonstrated a growing interest in addressing patients’ feelings and realized the importance of dealing with these issues in a way that the patient would be satisfied.​

The content is posted in a Moodle platform.

At the end of the semester, the best stories are published at the school’s newsletter.

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