Medical Humanities
How does one define the medical humanities?
The term refers to health and medicine as seen through the lens of the humanities (philosophy, ethics, history, religion, culture and society), and portrayed through the visual arts, literature and other creative media.
Hear it straight from the pioneer, Dr. Edmund Pellegrino. (7 minute video)
Why is studying the medical humanities useful?
As a subject, the Medical Humanities are useful in teaching medical students and residents: it facilitates enhanced observational skills (good for the clinical eye) and increasing empathy for the patient. Philosophy encourages critical thinking and its application to medical practice. Bioethics is another field where the intersection of the humanities and medicine enhance each other’s effects on patient care and clinical decision making. “The humanities and social sciences do more than shed light on the cultural context of disease. They can also help doctors connect with patients as multidimensional beings”, writes Dr. Molly Worthen in a piece for the New York Times.
The creative arts are also a good way for healthcare professionals to cope with the stress that can be part and parcel of taking care of patients. I don’t think it matters whether the doctor (or whichever clinician) is good at creating and puts together an acceptable finished product; the process of participating in making something is reward enough.
The New York Times opinion section carries a piece by Dr. Molly Worthen that argues for the inclusion of the medical humanities in medical school curricula, and elevation of of its status as an integral part instead of “relaxing time off, rather than as an introduction to new, challenging ways of thinking” (I admit that was my first introduction to this field). She writes that we should get rid of the “That false dichotomy — the evidence-based hard sciences that produce perfectly objective knowledge versus the fuzzy humanities that gesture at feelings” and embrace the science and art of medicine together: “medicine is not a science but an art that uses science as one of many tools.”
Here’s an essay from Dr. Danielle Ofri that tackles those sentiments more eloquently than I ever could. My favorite quote: “Somehow, I would have to shape my medical life so that it would encompass the arts and the humanities… I could never have imagined that the squishy arts might occupy a front row seat next the hard sciences.” That’s me. The squishy and the hard are next to each other.
Read more about my Medical Humanities journey in this blog post.
Medical Humanities Websites – where you can learn a bit more:
- Penn State University College of Medicine has an entire Department of Humanities. They are one of the world leaders in integrating the humanities into the medical school curriculum. Here’s an article about the department.
- NYU Langone Health has a Division of Medical Humanities within the Department of Medicine. They have an explorable database featuring the arts and literature as they relate to medicine, LitMed, where you can browse fiction and nonfiction books, visual arts and performing arts – they are grouped by category.
- Baylor University in Texas offers a Bachelors degree in the Medical Humanities (the first in the USA)
- Stanford University‘s medical school offers Bioethics and Medical Humanities as a scholarly concentration for its students. Also check out their Medicine and the Muse program.
- The University of Delaware links to multiple opportunities and sources of information about the medical humanities on their website.
- Explore Oxford University’s TORCH (The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities) Medical Humanities website. Under the “Resources” tab you will find interviews with their faculty, trainees and staff about how the humanities enrich medical practice.
- The Conversation, a website with “academic rigour, journalistic flair” has an entire section with articles dealing with the medical humanities.
Journals and Journal articles
- British Medical Journal (BMJ) Medical Humanities
- Journal of Medical Humanities
- Here’s a journal article from Greece, supporting the introduction of the medical humanities in the medical school curriculum.
- And another journal article, this one from the Academic Medicine journal.
- The Medical Teacher tackles the medical humanities in a commentary.
- Medical humanities: Stranger at the gate, or long-lost friend? from the journal Medicine, Healthcare and Philosophy
- Danielle Ofri, MD, one of my favorite authors, has an article on her website. Check out her books and TED talks there too.
- The American College of Physicians has commentary from 2012.
- Here’s a book from 2017 I haven’t read, but looks promising. Medical Humanities in Education: Definition, History, Benefits, Challenges, Debates and Experiences of Medical Schools around the World, by Amal A. Abdul-Rasheed El-Moamly, M.D., Ph.D.
- Medical Humanities and Medical Education: How the medical humanities can shape better doctors (Routledge Advances in the Medical Humanities) by Alan Bleakley is another book I haven’t read; it looks very comprehensive though.
Medical humanities podcasts
The Art of Medicine – from their website: “Where left brain meets right. The Art of Medicine is a podcast that explores the medical humanities, a field that examines universal questions of health, disease, life, death, and doctoring through the lens of the arts and social sciences. It is produced in association with Mount Sinai Academy for Medicine and the Humanities.”
The BMJ Medical Humanities podcast from the leading international journal that reflects the whole field of medical humanities. They also have a blog.
Narrative Medicine
Narrative medicine is a subset of the medical humanities, where literature about the doctor-patient experience or a patient’s experience of illness come to the fore.
- One can formally study this and get a Master of Science in Narrative Medicine degree from Columbia University.
- Dr. Rita Charon, one of the pioneers of Narrative Medicine, writes about it in a 2004 article from the New England Journal of Medicine.
- Stephanie Chapple writes about narrative medicine in her article for the Australian Medical Student Journal, where she details narrative medicine in three movements, attention, representation, and affiliation. Representation is the types of stories one can tell (for example, the experience of illness, or an account of the doctor-patient encounter). Read more here.
- Here’s a systematic review of narrative medicine as an educational tool from Medical Teacher.
