RESUMO
Narrative competence is one of the factors to reflect humanistic literacy of doctors and nurses. According to the advice of many experts, the narrative competence should be improved from the stage of medical students through the two major tools including close reading of text and reflective writing. Based on the background of prevention and control of COVID-19 outbreak, this paper aimed to clarify the focus and methodology of close reading and reflective writing, that was, close reading was supposed to focus on the analysis of disease metaphors in classic literature and narrative function in clinical works and realism works, and writing tended to focus on the the differentiation of writing purpose and the writing guidance in different texts. The proper guidance plus solid training in close reading and writing will definitely lay a strong foundation for medical students in achieving humanistic quality.