Abstract
BackgroundTo facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration and to make connections between patients’ diseases and their social/cultural contexts, the study examined whether the use of heterogeneous cluster grouping in reflective writing for medical humanities literature acquisition could have positive effects on medical university students in terms of empathy, critical thinking, and reflective writing.MethodsA 15-week quasi-experimental design was conducted to investigate the learning outcomes. After conducting cluster algorithms, heterogeneous learning clusters (experimental group; n = 43) and non-heterogeneous learning clusters (control group; n = 43) were derived for a medical humanities literature study. Before and after the intervention, an Empathy Scale in Patient Care (ES-PC), a critical thinking disposition assessment (CTDA-R), and a reflective writing test were administered to both groups.ResultsThe findings showed that on the empathy scale, significant differences in the “behavioral empathy,” “affective empathy,” and overall sections existed between the post-test mean scores of the experimental group and those of the control group, but such differences did not exist in “intelligent empathy.” Regarding critical thinking, there were significant differences in “systematicity and analyticity,” “skepticism and well-informed,” “maturity and skepticism,” and overall sections. As for reflective writing, significant differences existed in “ideas,” “voice and point of view,” “critical thinking and representation,” “depth of reflection on personal growth,” and overall sections, but not in “focus and context structure” and “language and conventions.”ConclusionThis study outlined an alternative for using heterogeneous cluster grouping in reflective writing about medical humanities literature to facilitate interdisciplinary cooperation to provide more humanizing medical care.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12909-016-0758-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
To facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration and to make connections between patients’ diseases and their social/cultural contexts, the study examined whether the use of heterogeneous cluster grouping in reflective writing for medical humanities literature acquisition could have positive effects on medical university students in terms of empathy, critical thinking, and reflective writing
To facilitate interdisciplinary interaction and to make connections between patients’ diseases and their social/ cultural contexts, the study examined whether the use of heterogeneous cluster grouping in reflective writing about medical humanities literature could have positive effects on medical university students in terms of empathy, critical thinking, and reflective writing
Students situated in heterogeneous learning clusters for reflective writing about medical humanities literature would show more empathy than those situated in non-heterogeneous learning clusters
Summary
To facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration and to make connections between patients’ diseases and their social/cultural contexts, the study examined whether the use of heterogeneous cluster grouping in reflective writing for medical humanities literature acquisition could have positive effects on medical university students in terms of empathy, critical thinking, and reflective writing. To develop medical university students’ sensitivity, empathy, and understanding of human conditions from a medical humanities perspective, it is necessary to incorporate humanities and art into existing curricula to balance the largely scientific content; such lessons act as a vehicle for exploring what it means to be humane [1, 2]. Humanities and literature study Research shows that medical university students with backgrounds in humanities and sciences would perform better in practice than those with backgrounds in science alone [3, 4], because medical science cannot offer a complete picture of humanities. Serving as a complementary study of humanities, literature study can help foster human and humane understanding, by developing skills of observation, analysis, insight, reasoning, empathy, and self-reflection [5]
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