Aim/Purpose
This paper addresses the lack of structured pedagogical frameworks for engaging with multimodal illness narratives in healthcare education, which can limit their effectiveness in reflective learning and professional communication training among students majoring in medical and healthcare fields.

Background
Although multimodal illness narratives in narrative medicine and graphic medicine offer rich, human-centered insights, their qualitative and open-ended nature often leaves educators without clear methodological guidance. This paper responds to this gap by integrating Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) within an informing science framework to systematize narrative engagement for medical and healthcare students.

Methodology
This study adopts a qualitative, design-based educational research approach. Participants are students majoring in medical and healthcare-related disciplines. The study implements an NLP-informed instructional framework within coursework involving multimodal illness narratives. Data are collected from student-generated narrative artifacts, reflective writings, and guided discussion activities to examine learning processes and communicative engagement.

Contribution
This paper contributes a novel, theory-informed pedagogical framework that bridges medical humanities, communication theory, and informing science. It represents one of the first empirical applications of NLP-informed multimodal illness narratives in healthcare education and extends existing scholarship by highlighting implications for human-centered AI-supported learning environments.

Findings
Preliminary findings suggest that the NLP-informed framework supports more structured reflection, enhances students’ awareness of language and cognitive framing, and facilitates cross-cultural communication in healthcare contexts.

Recommendations for Practitioners
Educators in medical and healthcare programs are encouraged to integrate NLP-informed strategies into narrative-based learning activities to support reflective practice, empathy development, and culturally responsive communication.

Recommendations for Researchers
Future research should further validate the framework through larger samples, mixed-method designs, and comparative studies across disciplines and cultural settings.

Impact on Society
By strengthening communication training for future healthcare professionals, this approach may contribute to more empathetic, culturally sensitive, and patient-centered healthcare practices.

Future Research
Subsequent studies may explore LMS-based or AI-supported implementations of the framework, including the use of AI-assisted discussion forums or conversational agents to scaffold narrative engagement and reflection.