Abstract
This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. The teaching of medical humanities to medical students has internationally been regarded as valuable in contributing to a well-rounded medical education. Nevertheless, however valuable one believes the teaching of the medical humanities to be, unless the students perceive the teaching to be useful, relevant, important & interesting, it is unlikely that they will derive maximum clinical benefit from the experience. In this small study, 18 randomly selected first clinical year University College London Medical School students were exposed to humanities teaching during the afternoon session of their 9 days of the year spent in the community attached to a General Practitioners clinic. At the end of the year their views & impression of the teaching of poetry, philosophy of science, biomedical ethics, medical history, museum/art gallery visits & film was obtained. Overall, the students were very positive about their experience & rated all programme components very highly.
Highlights
18 randomly selected first clinical year University College London Medical School students were exposed to humanities teaching during the afternoon session of their 9 days of the year spent in the community attached to a General Practitioners clinic
Teaching the humanities to medical students has been justified as a means of explaining scientific endeavour (Baum, 2016) and historical perspective (Kuhn, 1970), developing ethical awareness (Arawi, 2010; Russell, Searight & Allmayer, 2014), facilitating personal growth, expanding empathy, self-awareness and sensitivity (Wolters & Wijnen-Meijer, 2012) and helping students to live with ambivalence & uncertainty (Klugman, Peel & BeckmannMendez, 2011)
The medical students come into medicine full of compassion & enthusiasm and the challenge is how to prevent the depersonalising reductionist reality of modern medicine from crushing their idealism and empathy (Hojat, Vergare, Maxwell et al, 2009)
Summary
Teaching the humanities to medical students has been justified as a means of explaining scientific endeavour (Baum, 2016) and historical perspective (Kuhn, 1970), developing ethical awareness (Arawi, 2010; Russell, Searight & Allmayer, 2014), facilitating personal growth, expanding empathy, self-awareness and sensitivity (Wolters & Wijnen-Meijer, 2012) and helping students to live with ambivalence & uncertainty (Klugman, Peel & BeckmannMendez, 2011). All, teaching the humanities to medical students has been justified as a counter to the relentless reductionism of medicine. Whatever the intrinsic merit & value of teaching the humanities, unless the students appreciate the experience they are unlikely to obtain the maximum educational potential from it, well-intentioned. The aim of this study was to evaluate the attitude & perceptions of first clinical year medical students as an important gauge to the acceptability of this humanities programme
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