Training the professionals, transforming the environment

This chapter is based on the narrative medicine program carried out since 2019 at Centre Hospitalier Intercommunal de Créteil (CHIC) next to Paris. Here, five interprofessional and transdisciplinary groups attend a two-hour workshop of narrative medicine once a month. It is the first experience of this type. An innovative three-phase training model (basic, creative, and co-facilitated workshops) has been developed: it proves the feasibility of such an experience at the hospital level. A detailed description of this model will be given. This chapter will also provide a qualitative analysis of written feedback from participants to evaluate the effects of this experience on professional wellbeing, narrative competence, and institutional affiliation. It will be shown that, thanks to a first-person experience in a secure group and transitional space, systematic and systemic narrative medicine training at the hospital contributes to the improvement of wellbeing and supports the narrative co-construction of ecological relationships. Through some concrete examples of organizational impact and institutional effects, it will be also suggested how narrative medicine can promote the construction and development of a more narrative environment.