Medical Humanities Research Articles

Between medicine, humanities and the law: compiling a living archive of assisted dying

Stories about personal experiences of assisted dying, a term comprising both instances when a lethal substance is administered by a physician or by the patient themselves, are frequently cited in...

Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging: A Health Humanities Consortium Initiative.

The Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging (JEDIB) committee formed in 2022 in order to support diversity and inclusion in the Health Humanities Consortium and to advance best practices for equity and inclusion in the field of medical and health humanities. This Forum Essay describes our first year of work, including participant-led commitment statement crafting and strategic planning. Health humanities-specific JEDIB work is described in detail in essays about disability justice; gender, sex, sexuality, and reproductive justice; and Indigeneity from a decolonial standpoint. The authors offer transferable techniques for other organizations and institutions with particular attention to heath care and health professions education. Another essay analyzes US institutional and demographic data to show that as an academic program, health humanities gives robust indicators of contributing significantly to student diversity and inclusive success in higher education and medical education. The Forum closes with a reflection on joining the work of equity and inclusion and what new priorities and awareness can emerge to inform health equity scholarship and epistemic justice.

The first English textbook of plastic surgery—William (Jerry) Moore

The nineteenth century bore witness to a remarkable proliferation of reconstructive literature in Europe, based on procedures originally described in India and Italy. Despite the publication of a successful forehead flap in England in 1816, texts exclusively dedicated to the field of plastic surgery were relatively scarce in the English-speaking world. The authors sought to identify the first English textbook entirely devoted to plastic surgery. A comprehensive examination was undertaken, spanning various databases encompassing medical, medical humanities and historical domains (PubMed, MEDLINE, Web of Science, Anthropology, JSTOR, Encyclopedia of Ancient History), as well as an extensive perusal of materials housed in the State Library of Victoria, the University of Melbourne and the HathiTrust Digital Library. The scope of this search was confined to publications predating Harold Gillies' influential 1920 textbook. Within this vast literary landscape, an Australian surgeon named William Moore emerged as a figure of notable significance, authoring the first textbook of plastic surgery in English in 1899. Moore's legacy as a pioneering surgeon ahead of his era is undeniable. Yet, various factors conspired to obscure his rightful place in the annals of surgical history.

Analysis of Research Trends in Medical Humanities – Focusing on Topic Modeling (LDA)

Analysis of Research Trends in Medical Humanities – Focusing on Topic Modeling (LDA)

Queer Medical Humanities

Abstract This chapter reviews a range of scholarship working at the intersection of queer theory and critical medical humanities in 2022 and 2023 under the following headings: 1. HIV/AIDS; 2. Healthcare Environments; 3. Trans Health Studies; 4. Bioethics. The chapter sets out emergent movements within queer medical humanities and articulates how scholars utilize queer theory and analysis to encourage critical change within medical and healthcare theory and practice. The chapter provides a baseline for understanding how queer theory is adapted to interdisciplinary studies, especially in the UK and Europe.

Social capital in academia: Measuring researchers’ collaboration habits versus preferences

Abstract Many studies concerning social capital in academia have used social network theory and social network analysis as an approach. Social network analysis focuses on a boundary set of actors in a network and what it reveals as an outcome of social capital. However, social capital is also a precursor or catalyst for cooperative work. Here, we investigate researchers’ perceptions of social capital based on the hypothesis that what academics do when they collaborate (as a habit), may not relate to what they actually prefer. We have piloted a questionnaire-survey to test this, focusing on the goal-seeking behavior of publishing new research. Data were collected from 1,092 academics, across 6 faculties at the University of Copenhagen: Health and Medical Science, Science, Social Sciences, Humanities, Law, and Theology. The survey of collaboration habits first revealed significant differences at the level of gender, academic position, years active in publishing, and faculty. Collaboration preferences, interpreted from social capital theory, were also measured according to three interrelated dimensions—i.e. cognitive, relational, and structural. Survey respondents tended to prefer the cognitive-relational aspects of collaboration (i.e. reciprocity and obligation; shared understandings), over certain structural determinants (i.e. linking to networks). Few habits and preferences correlated and did not correlate strongly. Amongst the researchers who indicated a preference for bridging networks (i.e. working with people who have different types of expertise), few confirmed this as a collaboration habit, particularly with experts from organizations outside academia (i.e. the business/public sector).

Patients as knowledge partners in the context of complex chronic conditions

This article conveys how taking patient knowledge seriously can improve patient experience and further medical science. In clinical contexts related to infection-associated chronic conditions and other complex chronic illnesses, patient...

A language of Ill Feelings: defining the undefined in Alice Hattrick’s Ill Feelings (2021)

ABSTRACT In Ill Feelings (2021), Alice Hattrick shares their experience and history of ME/CFS, a chronic illness that not only dictates their own life but also their mother’s. Drawing on their own diary entries, medical documents, and literary and artistic material, Hattrick blends the voices of women whose illnesses cannot be cured in a standardized medical fashion, because their origins remain unknown. Hattrick’s narrative echoes the reactions of disbelief individuals dealing with Long COVID and other forms of post-viral fatigue have experienced. It is a defiant account of illness that resists the gendered nature of medical diagnosis and seeks to undo the structures that continue to question and condemn women patients to a life in hiding. In this article, I explore the ways in which Hattrick re-establishes truth to the illness narratives of women. Building on knowledge that has shaped the medical humanities, I argue that Hattrick redefines what doctors have termed their hysterical language, one they share with their mother, to create a network of support for women that encourages them to speak their language of ill feelings, find understanding, and thereby oppose institutional medicine.

Disruption, transformation and silos: medical humanities and the management gurus

To disrupt, to transform and to break through silos are common sense aims for the medical humanities and other interdisciplinary endeavours. These keywords arise because of the influence upon the...

"This was never about a virus": Perceptions of Vaccination Hazards and Pandemic Risk in #Covid19NZ Tweets.

In this paper, we draw on qualitative methods from the medical humanities and quantitative approaches from corpus linguistics to assess the different mappings of pandemic risks by Twitter (X) users employing the #Covid19nz hashtag. We look specifically at their responses to government measures around vaccines between August and November 2021. Risk, we reveal, was a major discursive thread in tweets during this period, but within our tweets, it was the vaccine rather than the virus around which hazard perception and response were grouped. We find that the discursive stance of those opposed to the vaccine evoked entangled medical and political hazards, untrustworthy experts, obscure information, restrictions on sovereignty, threats to children, and uncertain future dangers, all of which positioned them within what Ulrich Beck termed the world risk society. We also found that these narratives of risk manifested in specific Twitter styles, which employed a consistently larger number of hashtags. The lack of conjunctions between the hashtags, we argue, encouraged a disordered reading of doubt and precaution, as the hashtags presented triggering phrases whose interconnections were hinted at rather than specified. By contrast, those who tweeted in support of government measures were rhetorically led by solutions rather than risks, with one exception: their perception of those who were vaccine opposed. We use scholarship on risk and precautionary logic to map out the contrasting positions in tweets addressing Aotearoa New Zealand's pandemic experience during the closing months of 2021.

Reimagining chronic pain management: the case for integrated care in India

PurposeThe viewpoint essay focusses on the significance of integrated care (IC) for chronic pain in India, in an attempt to reflect on how pain management and care can be made more accessible and available to patients.Design/methodology/approachThis reflective essay invites looking at chronic pain beyond biomedical perspectives. Insights from the medical humanities and the social sciences are used to emphasise chronic pain as a psychosocial and socio-political phenomenon and not just a biomedical category.FindingsThe essay argues that there are several challenges and barriers to the recognition and validation of chronic pain as a speciality.Originality/valueIC has not received sufficient attention in the Indian context, where medical curricula and training do not sufficiently include an understanding of the multi-faceted aspects surrounding chronic pain. By highlighting the role of humanistic approaches to effectively bridge the gap, this viewpoint essay illustrates the significance of drawing on an integrated or holistic healthcare framework.

InCHARGE: Co-creating, implementing and evaluating interventions to utilize nurses' competence and achieve person-centred fundamental care-A research protocol describing an action research approach.

This research protocol presents an action research project with the aim to demonstrate the value of person-centred fundamental care to nurses and nurse managers in surgical care units to encourage a far-reaching change in this direction. The objectives are to describe this process and to evaluate the effects on missed nursing care and person-centred fundamental care. In a novel collaboration between nursing science and medical humanities the action research design will be used to interact with nursing staff and leaders in three surgical care units and design interventions with the purpose to affect the direction of nursing. Initially, the care units will be presented with interactive workshops including evidence-based education on person-centered fundamental care, person-centredness, nurse role responsibility and leadership. This will be followed by cocreation of interventions to stimulate person-centered fundamental care. The Fundamentals of Care framework will be used as the overarching theoretical framework. Data on missed nursing care, person-centred climate and person-centered fundamental care will be collected repeatedly from patient- and nursing stakeholders through interviews and validated questionnaires. Additionally, data from written reflections following clinical observations and focus group interviews will be included. The duration of the study will be approximately five years from ethical approval. It has been previously reported that the current working environments of registered nurses are forcing them to ration their caring responsibilities, leading to a lack of fulfillment of patients' fundamental care needs, with possible severe consequences for patients. The action research design helps researchers gain an understanding of the contextual factors important for forthcoming interventions, enabling reflective processes and cocreation of interventions with stakeholders. This may lead to feasible interventions and strengthen nursing leadership in the involved units.

Measurement of humanity among interns of Internal Medicine Department, Damascus University: a cross-sectional study

Background: Although humanity is important within the medical health field, the authors lack studies that address this topic. Objective: The authors aimed to assess humanity among a sample of Syrian internal medicine interns. Methods: The authors have used a validated scale based on the Medical Humanity Scale (MHS) categorized into seven human values included in 30 questions (patient-oriented care, respect, empathy, ethics, altruism, and compassion). The scale can test the differentiation between these interns with different levels of medical humanity. A 7-point Likert scale was adopted. Six hundred sixty-five participants from the Internal Medicine Department, Faculty of Medicine, Damascus University entered our study. Results: The mean score of the MHS was 147.14 (13.1) Female residents humanity scores (mean 149.14, SD 15.1) was significantly higher than male students’ scores (mean 145.48, SD 13.35; P=.007), KMO=0.843>0.7, which is near 1, and the Bartlett test of sphericity =4187.043 (df=465; P=.01). The Cronbach α was >0.683, was indicating the validity and reliability of the scale. Conclusions: The results of this study suggest that the humanity level is accepted by using a scale based on MHS among interns of the Internal Medicine Department, Damascus University.

DRAWING CONTAGION: AN ANALYSIS OF COVID-19 COMICS

When the world was suddenly caught up in the quagmires of Covid-19 pandemic, many attempts at providing awareness happened at personal, local and global levels. The outbreak of the pandemic witnessed an outbreak of narratives to shape a collective understanding about the disease. Along with the verbal narratives visual culture also contributed to the shaping of the culture of contagion. Comics have long been part of the visual culture of medicine. Graphic medicine is a novel field of medical humanities which is an intersection of the discourse of medicine and comics. This paper analyses how comics are used as a cultural artefact to sensitise the public during the Covid-19 pandemic period. It also attempts at analysing how the spatio-temporal tropes of the comics have made visible the invisible virus that spread havoc across the globe. The paper analyses the Covid comics that emerged during the period and how it has influenced the global public in shaping its culture of contagion.

Pandemic Biopolitics in Romanian Literature

Pandemic Biopolitics in Romanian Literature. The biopolitics of the COVID pandemic years has had a powerful impact on all areas of activity, including literature and the arts. Contagion and isolation quickly became the governing terms of social interaction, and writers promptly echoed their impact in works that tried to capture the spirit of the time as it was unfolding. Romanian writers were particularly prompt in responding to the challenges of this unprecedented crisis in modern decades, therefore the first pandemic writings were published in the later months of 2020. Florina Ilis’ Pandemia veselă și tristă (The Happy and Sad Pandemic, Polirom, 2020), Teodor Hossu-Longin’s Măștile din spatele măștii (The Masks behind the Mask, Hyperliteratura, 2022) and collective volumes such as Izolare (Isolation, Nemira 2020) and Jurnal din vremea pandemiei. Proză de grup (Journal from the Times of the Pandemic, Brumar, 2021), edited by Marius Cosmeanu, are just the most visible examples that could be explored in this context. Drawing from theories concerning posthumanism, medical humanities, ethics and contagion, this paper aims to explore the manner in which the pandemic segment of Romanian literature could be integrated into a global literary framework that highlights a diversity of genres and a plurality of voices galvanizing the relationship between the massive effects of the pandemic and narrative art. My paper aims at mapping an emerging literary dialect that gives shape, voice and coherence to a collective experience that has left an indelible imprint on the present and will significantly shape the cultural climate of the near future. Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic, isolation, collective trauma, posthumanism, contagion, medical humanities, peripheral literatures.

A podcast to teach medical humanities at medical school: a text-mining study of students’ lived experience

ABSTRACT The teaching of medical humanities is increasingly being integrated into medical school curricula. We developed a podcast called Le Serment d’Augusta (Augusta’s Oath), consisting of six episodes tackling hot topics in the modern world of healthcare related to the patient-doctor relationship, professionalism, and ethics. This podcast aimed to provide scientific content in an entertaining way, while promoting debate among medical students. The Le Serment d’Augusta podcast was proposed as one of the various optional modules included in the second- to fifth-year curriculum at the School of Medicine of Sorbonne University (Paris). We asked students to report their lived experience of listening to the podcast. We then used a text-mining approach focusing on two main aspects: i) students’ perspective of the use of this educational podcast to learn about medical humanities; ii) self-reported change in their perception of and knowledge about core elements of healthcare after listening to the podcast. 478 students were included. Students were grateful for the opportunity to participate in this teaching module. They greatly enjoyed this kind of learning tool and reported that it gave them autonomy in learning. They appreciated the content as well as the format, highlighting that the topics were related to the very essence of medical practice and that the numerous testimonies were of great added value. Listening to the podcast resulted in knowledge acquisition and significant change of perspective. These findings further support the use of podcasts in medical education, especially to teach medical humanities, and their implementation in the curriculum.

The role of community mobilization in people’s healthcare-seeking behavior during the COVID-19 vaccination journey: select case studies from Madhya Pradesh

The purpose of this study is to understand the impact of community mobilization initiatives on citizens’ health-seeking behavior through the lens of COVID-19 vaccination in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India. This study follows a case study approach to understand community mobilization initiatives that led to increased COVID-19 vaccination uptake. The study delineates the process to increase community mobilization to improve the uptake of COVID-19 vaccination. It highlights the key components of community mobilization that were adopted: the involvement of local leadership (at district, block, and village level), support of vaccination/mobilizer team, the role of in-person communication, involvement of influential community heads and social workers, localized strategies and IEC materials, and support from the state administration. Additionally, the key communication themes that played a crucial role in increasing COVID-19 vaccination coverage are identified. The findings of this study will help the policymakers and practitioners in the domains of Health and Medical Humanities, Health Policy and Services, and Social Sciences to clarify the roles of community mobilization activities and initiatives in increasing vaccination coverage. Furthermore, the study provides evidence for the adaptation, integration, and enhancement of these activities based on the four case studies discussed.

Medical humanities. Insights and horizons

Medical humanities. Insights and horizons

Exploring medical humanities from heterogeneous focus groups: A thematic analysis.

Medical humanities has evolved to encompass a multidisciplinary approach, integrating humanities, social sciences, and arts into medical education and practice. Despite its flourishing development, the definition of medical humanities still requires refinement to be inclusive of various cultures and regions. This study aimed to explore perceptions among students, physicians, and nurses, with a focus on the definition, learning, and implementation of medical humanities. We conducted four heterogeneous focus groups, comprising 4th-year and 6th-year medical students, physicians (including three medical humanities educators), and nurses. Data collection utilized semi-structured guiding questions, followed by thematic analysis. The transcripts were manually analyzed in their original Mandarin, and participant names were anonymized to ensure that the authors remained unaware of the participants' identities throughout the study. The analysis identified three themes and 16 subthemes. Theme 1, "Medical Humanities Properties," included four subthemes: variety, evolvement, clinical relevancy, and the value of humaneness. Theme 2, "Medical Humanities Contents," comprised seven subthemes: self-cultivation, communication, empathy, cultural competence, medical ethics and law, embodiment, and one subtheme open for interpretation in varying circumstances. Theme 3, "Medical Humanities Cultivation," included five subthemes: personal growth, curriculum, multimedia, clinical experience, and metacognition. Our study introduces a three-layered framework of medical humanities, emphasizing the field's dynamic nature and the critical role of experiential learning in developing key competencies such as empathy, awareness, and communication. This framework incorporates the concept of "self-cultivation" from Eastern philosophy, accentuating the significance of well-being for health-care professionals. The research not only enriches medical humanities education and practice by incorporating Eastern perspectives but also deepens the overall understanding of humanity in health care.

Max Shulman. The American Pipe Dream: Performance of Drug Addiction, 1890–1940

The American Pipe Dream is a painstakingly researched, interdisciplinary exploration of representations of drug addiction in American performance from 1890 to 1940. Tracing the genealogies of many contemporary ideas about addicts and addiction to roots within these performances, it will engage students of performance history, medical humanities, and the sociology of literature.