Advanced Certificate in Narrative-Based Medicine

Build upon your foundation in Narrative-Based Medicine through the Advanced Certificate in Narrative-Based Medicine. This new offering allows learners to continue exploring their interest in narrative-based medicine through workshops, short programs, mentored projects, special sessions and activities in a wide range of topics and arts-based modalities.

Goal

The Advanced Certificate allows you to continue your learning in narrative-based medicine, strengthen ties to our supportive professional community, and develop a personal portfolio of resources and skills to move NBM into practice, education, or scholarship.

Target Audience

Healthcare practitioners from all clinical fields and disciplines who have completed the Foundational Certificate and are looking to continue their learning.

Advanced Certificate Requirements

Pre-Requisite:

All learners who have successfully completed the requirements for the Foundational Certificate are eligible to continue their studies towards the Advanced Certificate.

Program faculty are available for an intake consultation to discuss an individualised plan of study tailored to the learner’s interests and goals.

Learners who have successfully completed the requirements for the Advanced Certificate may submit a request (with a list of completed electives) to receive the Advanced Certificate.

Certificate Requirements & Structure:

In order to be eligible to receive the Advanced Certificate, learners must complete:

  1. Pre-requisite Foundational Certificate (40 hours)
  2. Approved electives (40 hours)
  3. Mentored Advanced Project (MAP – 20 hours) under supervision of a NBM faculty member

Learners may choose to take any of the workshops, short programs, special sessions, and activities in any of the areas offered (see below). Electives must be completed within 3 years of beginning the Advanced Certificate (i.e. enrolment in your first elective).

Learners can focus on one area or mix and match to create their own learning path by exploring topics of interest or those most relevant to their practice. Upon completion of a total of 40 hours of electives and a 20 hour mentored advanced project (in addition to successful completion of the Foundational Certificate), learners are eligible to receive the Advanced Certificate, which will recognize their achievement in Narrative-Based Medicine.

Note: NBM workshops, short programs, special sessions and activities may be taken as stand-alone offerings. Learners interested in applying these offerings to an Advanced Certificate must complete the Foundational Certificate in Narrative-Based Medicine in addition to meeting the requirements for the Advanced Certificate.

Total: 100 hours

Mentored Advanced Project (MAP)

The Mentored Advanced Project (MAP) offers participants the opportunity to explore a topic of interest to them by completing a longer project in NBM under the supervision of a faculty member. It may be creative, reflective, curriculum-based, or scholarly.

MAPs can be done in any of the following areas of focus:

  • Narrative Strategies in Clinical Practice and Teaching

    Learners will build skills that can be used for day to day clinical practice, such as eliciting and responding to stories from patients and families, counseling techniques from narrative therapy, the use of therapeutic writing, bibliotherapy, and poetry prescriptions, and narrative-based supervision groups.

  • Writing for Healthcare Providers

    Narrative-Based Medicine begins, of course, with narrative – a way of knowing based on literary practice and attention. Whether interested in fiction, memoir, poetry, essays, drama, or some new form, learners will engage in intensive practical classes and workshops where they can share their work and take it further collaboratively and with expert guidance.

  • Storytelling through the Arts and Humanities

    A variety of forms and modalities, such as movement and presence, visual arts, photography, theatre, and music will be explored in a series of exciting workshops. Gallery visits, improvisation sessions, mindfulness practice, and other immersive, practical, hands-on experiences offer a unique approach to narrative-based medicine and the opportunity to radically re-imagine healthcare practice through new ways of attending, reflecting, and creating.

  • Ethics, Equity, and Inquiry in NBM

    Expand your understanding of ethical issues in NBM, and learn narrative strategies to promote equity in healthcare, and narrative approaches to inquiry. Topics may include: narrative bioethics, narrative advocacy, and narrative in qualitative research.

Accreditation

Continuing Professional Development (CPD), Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, is fully accredited by the Committee on Accreditation of Continuing Medical Education (CACME), a subcommittee of the Committee on Accreditation of Canadian Medical Schools (CACMS). This standard allows CPD to review and assess educational activities based on the criteria established by The College of Family Physicians of Canada and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.

As a result of a reciprocal agreement between the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, The American Medical Association, and The European Union for Medical Specialties (EUMS), CPD is permitted to assign respective credits.