Clinical narratives may be used as a means to improve the acquisition of clinical competences. Even though there are studies that recognize the potential value of clinical narratives to promote nursing professional development, there is no evidence that shows their value as a tool to improve nurses' competences to provide person-centred nursing care.

To evaluate the preliminary efficacy of narratives for the development of three nursing professional competences —respect, intentional presence and knowing the person— for providing person-centred care.

Using a pre-post quasi-experimental design, a pilot study with a total of 34 nurses enrolled in a training course of nursing specialization was conducted between September 2016 and June 2017. All the nurses received a multi-component intervention based on the Critical Reflective Inquiry model. The strategies of this programme consisted of writing three narratives, attending two masterclasses, participating in a discussion group, and participating in a face-to-face interview. The NarratUN Evaluation tool was used to assess the outcomes. Changes among nurses were analysed using the Wilcoxon signed Rank test.

The difference in the means between the pre- and post-intervention scores were statistically significant for respect [0.59 (95% CI 0.23–0.95; p = 0.001)], intentional presence [0.75 (95% CI 0.32–1.17; p < 0.0001)] and knowing the person [0.62 (95% CI 0.25–0.99; p = 0.001)]. The difference in the mean score for use of the narrative and reflection also increased significantly [0.65 (95% CI 0.32–0.98, p < 0.001)].

The use of narratives combined with other reflective strategies (masterclass sessions and discussion groups) proved to be effective for the development of professional competences of nurses.