Welcome to the Narrative-Based Medicine Lab (NBM Lab) at Continuing Professional Development, Temerty Faculty of Medicine — Canada’s home for teaching, research, and innovation in Narrative-Based Medicine.

The NBM Lab is a place to build community and to foster international collaboration and knowledge exchange across clinical and artistic disciplines.

The last couple of years have been a period of rapid expansion for the NBM Lab — our big bang! We’ve built our Foundational Certificate, launched the new Advanced Certificate, and hosted a number of stand-alone offerings on subjects from NBM and mindfulness to practical strategies for working with NBM and so much more.

In the future, in addition to growing our core programs, we’re planning to add workshops on such subjects as NBM and palliative care, poetry, publishing, narrative-based Balint groups for clinicians, and visual arts, as well as public and community events showcasing the wonderful work of our learners and colleagues. It’s an exciting time.

One of the strengths of the NBM Lab is that we welcome participants from all specialties, disciplines, and training levels. Our participants come from across Canada — and the world — and include family physicians, specialists, nurses, social workers, patient advocates, and everyone interested in the intersection of narrative, writing, and healthcare. They have gone on to spearhead their own NBM activities, and their creative and reflective work is regularly featured in venues such as CMAJ, CFP, The Intima, and other specialized journals.

As the NBM Lab grows, we aim to expand our educational and creative activities still further, working with you to cement the NBM Lab’s reputation as the most comprehensive training experience in Canada. We also hope that our educational and public activities will contribute to a broader, essential re-humanization of healthcare practice, premised on the fundamental importance of story as a human experience.

Our focus on promoting resilience and well-being (for patients, families, clinicians, and communities) is central to the task of humanizing healthcare, and key to all our programming.

Here at the NBM Lab, we will seek each day to encourage growth, connection, and compassion, by way of reading, writing, and reflecting. We warmly invite you to be part of our work.

Karen Gold PhD, MSW, RSW, Academic Lead
Damian Tarnopolsky PhD, Creative Lead