BACKGROUND: The discourse surrounding medical artificial intelligence (AI) often focuses on narratives that either hype the technology\'s potential or predict dystopian futures. AI narratives have a significant influence on the direction of research, funding, and public opinion and thus shape the future of medicine.
OBJECTIVE: The paper aims to offer critical reflections on AI narratives, with a specific focus on medical AI, and to raise awareness as to how people working with medical AI talk about AI and discharge their \"narrative responsibility.\"
METHODS: Qualitative semistructured interviews were conducted with 41 participants from different disciplines who were exposed to medical AI in their profession. The research represents a secondary analysis of data using a thematic narrative approach. The analysis resulted in 2 main themes, each with 2 other subthemes.
RESULTS: Stories about the AI-physician interaction depicted either a competitive or collaborative relationship. Some participants argued that AI might replace physicians, as it performs better than physicians. However, others believed that physicians should not be replaced and that AI should rather assist and support physicians. The idea of excessive technological deferral and automation bias was discussed, highlighting the risk of \"losing\" decisional power. The possibility that AI could relieve physicians from burnout and allow them to spend more time with patients was also considered. Finally, a few participants reported an extremely optimistic account of medical AI, while the majority criticized this type of story. The latter lamented the existence of a \"magical theory\" of medical AI, identified with techno-solutionist positions.
CONCLUSIONS: Most of the participants reported a nuanced view of technology, recognizing both its benefits and challenges and avoiding polarized narratives. However, some participants did contribute to the hype surrounding medical AI, comparing it to human capabilities and depicting it as superior. Overall, the majority agreed that medical AI should assist rather than replace clinicians. The study concludes that a balanced narrative (that focuses on the technology\'s present capabilities and limitations) is necessary to fully realize the potential of medical AI while avoiding unrealistic expectations and hype.

BACKGROUND: The dramatic reconfigurations of work-family roles and social boundaries resulting from the social restrictions imposed during the Covid-19 pandemic led working mums to look for online sites as spaces of emotional support and regulation where they could vent their emotions, share their concerns and griefs, and seek advice. They also became interactional spaces where mums\' relevant identities were reassessed and enacted as they aimed to balance work-family roles and improve their wellbeing. The paper explores how working mums discursively negotiated their multiple identities in an online support forum during times of global struggle, how these identity constructions reflect the domains of Work-Family Conflict (WFC) and how working mums perceived these identities are related to their mental health.
METHODS: 127 posts of Chilean working mums published in a public online support forum for working mums collected during the first half of 2020 were analysed in three phases. The first one involved a thematic analysis to identify themes and subthemes related to working mums\' identity construction in the data. The second phase involved conducting a narrative analysis of working mums\' microstorias in order to identify a master narrative crafted by these working mums, and contesting and conforming ideologies of motherhood, among others. Finally, the third phase involved a fine-grained discourse analysis of the most representative extracts illustrating working mums\' identity negotiation.
RESULTS: The sociolinguistic analysis showed that working mums\' discourses displayed three themes of self-reflection, namely, diminishing self-care, reassessing their self, and enhancing self through self-care. Identity-related sub-themes for each main theme are discussed and discursively analysed. Two main points are emphasised: (1) the identity that was most salient in working mums\' discourse was their personal identity (rather than work-family roles and identities), and (2) microstorias allowed working mums to challenge the hegemonic power of dominant discourses around their identities and their work-family roles.
CONCLUSIONS: The study shows that a sociolinguistic approach to the exploration of working mums\' identity negotiation is useful to highlight the ways in which mums contest binary assumptions of work-family roles and the need to reconsider working mums\' life domains so that they reflect working mums\' actual identity needs and lived experiences. Future lines of research are outlined.

Identifying effective interventions to promote children\'s vaccination acceptance is crucial for the health and wellbeing of communities. Many interventions can be implemented to increase parental awareness of the benefits of vaccination and positively influence their confidence in vaccines and vaccination services. One potential approach is using narratives as an intervention. This study aims to evaluate the effects of a narrative-based intervention on parents\' attitudes and vaccination intentions. In a pre-post experiment, 2,000 parents of young children recruited from an online pan-Canadian panel were randomly exposed to one of the three videos presenting narratives to promote childhood vaccination or a control condition video about the importance and benefits of physical activity in children. Pre-post measures reveal a relatively modest but positive impact of the narratives on parents\' attitudes and intention to vaccinate their child(ren). The results also suggest that narratives with more emotional content may be more effective in positively influencing vaccine attitudes than the more factual narrative. Using narratives to promote vaccination can positively influence parents\' views and intentions toward childhood vaccines, but research is still required to identify the best components of such interventions.

The current trend in healthcare is to actively involve patients in their own treatment; however, in practice, healthcare providers may adhere to paternalistic views, which may not align with ideals related to patient involvement. This tension may become visible when providers talk about service encounters that they experienced as being interactionally troubling. In this empirical qualitative study, we utilize Bamberg\'s narrative positioning analysis to explore how healthcare providers construct patients\' roles in narratives about such troubling exchanges. Data consist of 20 audio-recorded interviews with healthcare providers. We found two types of narratives in which healthcare providers\' perceptions of interactionally troubling patient exchanges were consistently related to their implicit evaluations of patients along a continuum of activeness versus passiveness. In the first, an active patient was considered ideal, and the problematic patient was one who is passive. In the second, a patient\'s over-activeness was thought to interfere with the healthcare delivery. While providers\' complaints about patient passiveness were unproblematically presented from the perspective of the patient participation ideal, complaints about patient over-activeness were difficult to account for due to their inherent connotations with paternalism. Thus, we conclude that there is a need for training and interventions aiming to develop healthcare providers\' critical awareness of shifting cultural models, including patient involvement ideals and providers\' capacity to reflect paternalistic tendencies.

This study explored the first-person lived experiences of 2 nurses and 2 doctors combating coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Wuhan, China. The in-depth interviews indicated that frontline healthcare professionals were at high risk of developing symptoms of fear, anxiety, depression, stress, loneliness, and burnout. The fear of being infected and the heavy workload in the isolation ward are the main risk factors for frontline health workers\' psychological problems. Comprehensive assistance and social support must be provided in order to resolve their mental health issues.

The acquisition of numeral classifiers and their associated syntactic structures has been documented and studied in a broad range of East and Southeast Asian languages among typically-developing (TD) young speakers. However, little research has considered how classifiers are acquired by children with developmental language disorder (DLD). The current paper compares and analyzes the development of numeral classifier patterns among a set of Vietnamese speakers, TD and DLD, studied over three years, from kindergarten to second grade. The investigation highlights differences in the performance of children with TD and DLD and describes the areas of classifier use that seem to be most challenging. Children with DLD produced more errors of classifier omission in kindergarten, showed more random alternations in representational forms, and delays in the development of three element classifier structures. Findings are discussed in terms of future directions in the study of classifier use in Vietnamese speakers with DLD.

Many human behavioral and brain imaging studies have used narratively structured stimuli (e.g., written, audio, or audiovisual stories) to better emulate real-world experience in the laboratory. However, narratives are a special class of real-world experience, largely defined by their causal connections across time. Much contemporary neuroscience research does not consider this key property. We review behavioral and neuroscientific work that speaks to how causal structure shapes comprehension of and memory for narratives. We further draw connections between this work and reinforcement learning, highlighting how narratives help link causes to outcomes in complex environments. By incorporating the plausibility of causal connections between classes of actions and outcomes, reinforcement learning models may become more ecologically valid, while simultaneously elucidating the value of narratives.

The issue of alcohol use disorder (AUD) has received significant attention, with a primary focus on individuals directly afflicted by the disorder. This extensive focus, while necessary, often overlooks the profound impact that AUD has on the family unit, particularly on spouses who play a crucial role in the dynamics of coping and recovery. However, the psychosocial and emotional challenges encountered by wives of those with AUD have been largely neglected in both research and therapeutic interventions. This oversight not only minimizes their suffering but also overlooks their potential contribution to the recovery process, underscoring the need for a more inclusive approach to understanding and addressing AUD. Building upon this foundation, the current study delves into the less explored terrain of the psychosocial and emotional ramifications borne by wives of individuals suffering from AUD. By highlighting the pivotal role that these women fulfil in family dynamics, it seeks to shed light on the transformative effects of their engagement in support groups, aiming to demonstrate how these networks promote resilience, empowerment, and healing for both the women and their families, thus offering a more comprehensive perspective on AUD\'s impact on society. Employing a qualitative narrative research design, the study utilized purposive sampling to select 36 participants from the northern, southern, and central regions of Kerala, India. Data collection was conducted through in-depth interviews using a semi-structured interview guide. The interviews, conducted initially in the local language, were transcribed into English and analyzed using the constant comparative method, ensuring that ethical considerations were upheld throughout the research process. The results of the study illuminate the multifaceted challenges faced by wives of individuals with AUD, including financial burdens, domestic violence, marital discord, and psychosocial issues. Notably, the participants reported a significant positive shift in their lives following their involvement in support groups, experiencing enhanced mental peace and tranquillity. This transformation enabled some participants to resume their education, engage with the community as role models and leaders, and reconstruct their lives. Most participants viewed their support group participation as a pivotal moment of hope restoration in their lives. The study reveals the necessity for integrating culturally sensitive support mechanisms into rehabilitation programs for families affected by AUD, advocating for broader adoption of support groups that cater to the specific sociocultural dynamics of affected communities.

We propose a new methodology to systematically transform presurveyed argument preferences into fictional narratives, that can help people to imagine the consequences of future events, and measure how they impact willingness to pay for a public policy. We apply narrative theory to construct two short narratives that depict an imaginary future, bleak due to climate change or energy dependence, and show experimentally that exposure to these narratives increases contributions in a Public Goods game, framed as payments toward the construction of new nuclear plant in The Netherlands. Our results suggest that fictional narratives can be used (and misused) as a tool of economic policy that allows conveying relevant information to people about complex issues. We discuss the ethical use of narratives and the value of their transparent construction for democratic will-formation and policy implementation when abstract factual information can be difficult to process or comprehend.

Founded in accordance with 19th century sex roles and public health concerns, nursing evolved as other-directed, dependent on physician-focused diagnosis, prescription decisions, and public health advancements. The result of this other direction is that public health nurse practitioners have endured significant workplace stress resulting in burnout, especially during COVID-19. To help decrease their burnout, nurses require development of self-direction. The Health Narratives Research Group (HeNReG) has the potential to reduce burnout in nurse practitioners by encouraging the development of self-direction. The HeNReG process is presented through historically analyzed documents regarding reducing burnout in health researchers by developing self-direction including: (1) three years of archived year-end feedback results provided by participants, (2) archived participant responses to specific HeNReG-related writing prompts, and (3) a comparison of HeNReG results with the outcomes of resilience programs. The conclusion-the HeNReG offers an effective option for reducing burnout in health researchers that has the potential to decrease nurse practitioner burnout in a way that resilience programs do not. Tailoring the HeNReG process to public health nurses is discussed, inviting future research for reducing burnout in public health nurses.