A Narrative Medicine Pilot Study Using the McGill Illness Narrative Interview (MINI) with Patients Suffering from Nephropathy and on Dialysis.

The present study, that belongs to a wider project intended to the introduction of Narrative Medicine with patients suffering from nephropathy and on dialysis (NeD), aims to explore the experience of patients suffering from NeD and to address physicians in the use of the McGill Illness Narrative Interview (MINI) when they collect patients’ illness narratives in their Narrative Medicine clinical practice. We conducted a narrative research study in October 2015 with the cooperation of an Hospital in Como (Italy). Ten patients suffering from nephropathy and on dialysis were interviewed and their illness narratives were collected using the Italian version of MINI. Then, a thematic analysis was realized referring to the disease, illness and sickness dimensions in relation to main sections of MINI interview. Different perspectives through which these patients feel the experience of living with a chronic pathology along with illness, disease and sickness dimensions emerged and were discussed. The study has pointed out the MINI narrative interview as a useful instrument to investigate the patients’ experiences suffering from a chronic illness and it provides a number of issues clinicians and medical professionals might integrate into the clinical practice when they use this narrative interview.