This feature is part of the NBM Lab’s Alumni Spotlight Series where we highlight the work of learners in the Advanced Certificate in Narrative-Based Medicine.
Aisha Husain is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family & Community Medicine at the University of Toronto and practices comprehensive family medicine in Uxbridge, Ontario.
In her teaching and medical practice, Aisha explores how narrative can help clinicians sustain well-being. She has implemented narrative-based medicine tools into an innovative faculty development curriculum that she collaboratively designed to cultivate resilience and reflection among family physicians and medical educators.
It was through Aisha’s clinical work and her experiences working within the community family medicine setting that her engagement with narrative medicine emerged.
During her training in multiple countries, she witnessed the social barriers many patients in marginalized communities faced. Seeing the impact of the social determinants of health, such as limited access to primary care, housing insecurity, and unemployment, she understood the importance of building trusting relationships with patients and the role attentive listening plays in their health outcomes. These experiences shaped her definition of family medicine as a relational and deeply human practice.
A life-changing moment in Aisha’s relationship with medicine emerged in 2022, when she received an unexpected diagnosis. The experience forced her to confront uncertainty while navigating the many intersecting roles she inhabits as a physician, teacher, and now patient. These experiences of illness and shifting identity led her towards introspective writing and eventually to narrative-based medicine as a framework for reflection, healing, and human connection.
Aisha’s mentored advanced project, “A Drop of Indigo Dye,” offers a raw exploration of illness, identity, and healing, demonstrating the importance of creating space for processing vulnerability within medicine. This work was subsequently published in The International Journal of Whole Person Care.
Through her storytelling work in narrative-based medicine, Aisha found a structured and supportive platform, where she could navigate her personal and professional journey and reflect on her values to shed some new insights on how she derives meaning and purpose.
Aisha is currently spearheading a research team exploring the factors that influence shifts in faculty perspectives on narrative-based medicine. She continues to examine how narrative practices can support clinicians amidst the systemic pressures of healthcare.
Aisha views narrative-based medicine as both an educational approach and a sustaining professional practice, one that helps clinicians remain attentive to themselves, their colleagues, and the stories of the patients they serve.