TO THE EDITOR:

Re: "Evaluating the Effectiveness of Visual Narrative Illustrations Used to Teach Pathophysiology to Undergraduate Nursing Students" by Mohamed El Hussein, Vincent Salyers, and Joseph Osuji, Nursing Education Perspectives, Vol. 39, No. 2

We read this article with great interest. Indeed, narrative medicine is commonly used as a pedagogical tool to enhance students' attention to the patient, empathy, and creativity (Arntfield, Slesar, Dickson, & Charon, 2013). This article demonstrates the potential impact of narrative on knowledge acquisition. The medical practice needs to focus on technical and theoretical excellence as much as on human aspects.

This study shows that those goals may be achieved by the utilization of a narrative tool during clinical or fundamental lectures. This is an opinion we share at the Toulouse Dental Faculty, France, and the McGill School of Dentistry, Canada. To develop "narrative dentistry" (Vergnes, Apelian, & Bedos, 2015), we include narratives in all forms of direct instruction, such as lectures and practical or clinical training. We call this the "voxelated curriculum."

To explain this concept, imagine a medical curriculum as an image: it is made of pixels, and those pixels are all the types of instruction. We add a new dimension to the curriculum using narrative. All narrative tools may be used: close reading, writing workshop, novels, ministories, comics (Charon, Hermann, & Devlin, 2016). Narratives are included in conventional courses for each instructional session and make a new human dimension that leads to a three-dimensional object instead of a two-dimensional picture. The narratives are "disseminated" in the entire curriculum and only last a few minutes but form a foundation upon which we build the dental formation. (See supplemental digital content at http://links.lww.com/NEP/A63 for figure.)

That's why we thank the authors of this paper, because they demonstrate that the use of narrative is not restricted to teach empathy, but it could also be use to develop practical or theoretical knowledge. Finally, this article shows that narrative pedagogy may be useful to expand all aspects of a positive medical professional attitude, not only in nursing practice but also in all medical fields.

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