Narrative medicine is an international discipline at the intersection of humanities, the arts, clinical practice, and health care justice with conceptual foundations in narratology, phenomenology, and liberatory social theory. Working with doctors, nurses, social workers, mental health professionals, chaplains, academics, and everyone interested in person-centered, respectful health care, this discipline aims to deepen self-awareness, clinical effectiveness, collaborative skills, and creative capacities through rigorous narrative training and practices.

Dr Muiris Houston has been a journalist with The Irish Times for over 20 years, and has twice won medical journalist of the year awards. His Medical Matters columns have been a centrepiece of the newspapers health supplement since it commenced publication. His aim throughout his writing career has been to demystify medical issues for the lay reader and to provide a voice for them. Muiris has also been Ireland news correspondent for the British Medical Journal and is a columnist with the doctor’s newspaper The Medical Independent. He has a special interest in narrative based medicine and is a champion of the patient’s story. An adjunct prof at the Department of Academic Neurology at Trinity College Dublin, he lectures on medical humanities to undergraduates and postgraduates.

Muiris has been honoured by the Royal College of General Practitioners and the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland for his achievements in bridging the gap between doctors and patients.