Teaching Of Medical Humanities Research Articles

Evaluation of learning outcomes of humanities curricula in medical students. A meta-review of narrative and systematic reviews.

To assess the expected learning outcomes of medical humanities subjects in medical studies curricula. To connect those expected learning outcomes with the types of knowledge to be acquired in medical education. Meta-review of systematic and narrative reviews. Cochrane Library, MEDLINE (Pubmed), Embase, CINAHL, and ERIC were searched. In addition, references from all the included studies were revised, and the ISI Web of Science and DARE were searched. A total of 364 articles were identified, of which six were finally included in the review. Learning outcomes describe the acquisition of knowledge and skills to improve the relationship with patients, as well as the incorporation of tools to reduce burnout and promote professionalism. Programs that focus on teaching humanities promote diagnostic observation skills, the ability to cope with uncertainty in clinical practice, and the development of empathetic behaviors. The results of this review show heterogeneity in the teaching of medical humanities, both in terms of content and at the formal level. Humanities learning outcomes are part of the necessary knowledge for good clinical practice. Consequently, the epistemological approach provides a valid argument for including the humanities in medical curricula.

A quantitative evaluation of empathy using JSE-S Tool, before and after a Medical Humanities Module, amongst first-year medical students in Nepal

BackgroundDoctors’ empathy: the understanding of patients’ experiences, concerns and perspectives, is highly valued by patients yet often lacking in patient care. Medical Humanities has been introduced within undergraduate curriculum to address this lack in empathy. There is a paucity of research on the impact of a course on medical humanities on the empathy of medical students, particularly in South Asia. Here we report on the impact of such an intervention in first-year medical students and aim to help outcome-based medical education and the evaluation and promotion of humanities within medical courses.MethodsThis study is a quantitative evaluation of student empathy before and after a Medical Humanities Module. The study employs the Jefferson Scale of Empathy-Student version (JSE-S). Participants were first-year medical students at Patan Academy of Health Sciences, Nepal. All cohort students were invited to participate and written consent was obtained. Data were collected both prior-to and on-completion-of, a six-week Medical Humanities Module. Pre- and post-module data were analyzed and the resulting empathy scores compared using the paired t-test or Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Subgroup analysis was undertaken to determine the association of the score with gender and preferred future speciality.ResultsSixty-two student responses were analyzed, 32 (52%) of whom were male. In the pre-module scores females had a slightly higher mean score than males:108 and 103 respectively. Participants who preferred people-oriented specialities also scored higher than those preferring procedure and technology-oriented specialities: 107 and 103 respectively. There was a significant increase in mean score for the entire class from pre-module to post-module: 105 to 116, p-value of < 0.001. Mean scores rose from 103 to 116 in males, and from 108 to 116 in females. Participants preferring procedure and technology-oriented specialities showed a significant increase in mean scores:103 to 117, and participants preferring people-oriented specialities demonstrated a smaller increase:107 to 111.ConclusionsThis study provides evidence of the impact of a Medical Humanities course for increasing medical student empathy scores at an institution in Nepal. Teaching of Medical Humanities is an important contributor to the development of empathy in medical students and its widespread expansion in the whole of South Asia should be considered.

A Visiting Professorship in Undergraduate Medical Education at the University of Alberta: Reflections on possibilities for medical humanities in China, and elsewhere.

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Enhancing humanities in medical education is a pressing concern in China. Similar to other countries, medical education in China evolved over the past century to emphasize bioscience and technology in treating illness and disease. Increasing recognition of the limitations of biomedical technology led to emergence of the medical humanities in the West in the latter half of the 20 th century, an interdisciplinary area that has continued to expand and grow. In China and elsewhere, activity in this area developed somewhat later. Ongoing patient-doctor disputes and decline in public trust in the medical profession in China has led many to advocate for enhanced emphasis on humanism and medical humanities. In 2017, the Chinese government introduced new healthcare reforms which included an education and training plan that promotes medical humanities teaching. Global developments have led to a wide variety of models and approaches that may be considered in cultivating medical humanities and humanism in China. With the support of China Medical University in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, PRC, Professor Wei visited the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry at the University of Alberta through the 2019/20 academic year. This article provides an overview of a wide array of medical humanities teaching and learning opportunities associated with the undergraduate medical education program at the University of Alberta. Professor Wei reflects on possibilities for medical humanities in medical education in China given all she learned and experienced as a visiting professor at the University of Alberta, which may be of interest to others who are also developing new approaches to introducing medical humanities as part of their health professions education program. Additional reflections regarding possibilities for global medical humanities are also offered.

“A huge part of my life”: Exploring links between music, medical education, and students’ developing identities as doctors

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. This paper explores the place of music in the development of future doctors, through the lens of a mixed method, longitudinal evaluation of a two-week music and medicine special studies project for second and third year medical students. Methods of evaluation included a cohort-wide survey (n=147) and individual interviews with students who had undertaken the music and medicine project (n = 4). Analysis of survey responses indicated that music is important to medical students and that many students recognise links between music and medicine. Medical students who undertook the music and medicine project reported benefits for their ongoing development, including changes in the way they understand and use music in their own lives and exposure to career options they had not considered previously. These benefits are discussed in relation to Dennhardt et al.'s (2016) framework of epistemic functions of arts-based teaching in medical education and to wider debates about whether medical humanities teaching should be compulsory or optional. We then propose that there is room for music in medical education within integrated medical humanities teaching, to promote critical thinking and openness to new perspectives. Optional music and medicine study should also be available for medical students who identify as musicians, to support them in the process of developing their identities as doctors.

Medical Students' attitude to the teaching of Medical Humanities.

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.

Medical Humanities Teaching in North American Allopathic and Osteopathic Medical Schools.

Although the AAMC requires annual reporting of medical humanities teaching, most literature is based on single-school case reports and studies using information reported on schools' websites. This study sought to discoverwhat medical humanities is offered in North American allopathic and osteopathic undergraduate medical schools. An 18-question, semi-structured survey was distributed to all 146 (as of June 2016) member schools of the American Association of Medical Colleges and the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine. The survey sought information on required and elective humanities content, hours of humanities instruction, types of disciplines, participation rates, and humanities administrative structure. The survey was completed by 134 schools (145 AAMC; 31 AACOM). 70.8% of schools offered required and 80.6% offered electives in humanities. Global health and writing were the most common disciplines. Schools required 43.9 mean (MD 45.4; DO 37.1) and 30 (MD 29; DO 37.5) median hours in humanities. In the first two years, most humanities are integrated into other course work; most electives are offered as stand-alone classes. 50.0% of schools report only 0-25% of students participating in humanities electives. Presence of a certificate, concentration or arts journal increased likelihood of humanities content but decreased mean hours. Schools with a medical humanities MA had a higher number of required humanities hours. Medical humanities content in undergraduate curriculum is lower than is indicated in the AAMC annual report. Schools with a formal structure have a greater humanities presence in the curriculum and are taken by more students.

Rethinking research in the medical humanities: a scoping review and narrative synthesis of quantitative outcome studies.

The rise of medical humanities teaching in medical education has introduced pressure to prove efficacy and utility. Review articles on the available evidence have been criticised for poor methodology and unwarranted conclusions. To support a more nuanced discussion of how the medical humanities work, we conducted a scoping review of quantitative studies of medical humanities teaching. Using a search strategy involving MEDLINE, EMBASE and ERIC, and hand searching, our scoping review located 11045 articles that referred to the use of medical humanities teaching in medical education. Of these, 62 studies using quantitative evaluation methods were selected for review. Three iterations of analysis were performed: descriptive, conceptual, and discursive. Descriptive analysis revealed that the medical humanities as a whole cannot be easily systematised based on simple descriptive categories. Conceptual analysis supported the development of a conceptual framework in which the foci of the arts and humanities in medical education can be mapped alongside their related epistemic functions for teaching and learning. Within the framework, art functioned as expertise, as dialogue or as a means of expression and transformation. In the discursive analysis, we found three main ways in which the relationship between the arts and humanities and medicine was constructed as, respectively, intrinsic, additive and curative. This review offers a nuanced framework of how different types of medical humanities work. The epistemological assumptions and discursive positioning of medical humanities teaching frame the forms of outcomes research that are considered relevant to curriculum decision making, and shed light on why dominant review methodologies make some functions of medical humanities teaching visible and render others invisible. We recommend the use of this framework to improve the rigor and relevance of future explorations of the efficacy and utility of medical humanities teaching.

The teaching of medical humanities

The teaching of medical humanities

How to make the most of history and literature in the teaching of medical humanities: the experience of the University of Geneva

In this paper the authors discuss the benefits of history and literature in the teaching of medical humanities. They suggest that human sciences produce a common effect, which they call...

Don't cry for us Argentinians: two decades of teaching medical humanities

Medical humanities—history, literature, anthropology, ethics and fine arts applied to medicine—play an important role in medical education. For more than 20 years an effort has been made to obtain an...

Medical History in the Undergraduate Medical Curriculum

History has long played a role in the education of American physicians, but the uses of medicine's past have changed over time. In the late nineteenth century, some physicians taught medical history to their students to supply a sense of continuity with professional traditions in times of rapid and bewildering change. Other physicians believed that instruction in medical history would impart a sense of refinement to medical practitioners. In the late twentieth century, medical history is increasingly viewed as a significant dimension of the professional, intellectual, and humanistic development of medical students. Further, it is one of the principal means by which recent, radical changes in health care can be given needed perspective. The knowledge that medicine and the medical sciences are fundamentally social enterprises is an important lesson for medical students. Through exposure to the history of health care, students also learn that medical knowledge is itself subject to change and is acquired in specific contexts. In the 1990s, medical history is taught in a variety of settings. In some schools, history is integrated into the teaching of medical humanities. Where medical history is institutionally distinct from the humanities, courses in medical history may be either elective or required. In order to reach students at every stage of their medical education, historians and clinicians can join forces to teach history in innovative and flexible programs.

The clinical medical humanities program at Loyola University of Chicago.

The authors emphasize that an effective medical humanities program must be based on clinically oriented training. They then describe in detail such a program at Loyola University of Chicago Medical Center; the program consists of a four-year required curriculum that is clinically reinforced by having the students accompany attending physicians on rounds and is taught by faculty representing a wide range of disciplines in medicine and other fields. The paper offers several guidelines to the person or persons who would organize and direct a clinical medical humanities program, describes obstacles that the Loyola program faced when it was getting started, presents the purpose, focus, and curricular topics of the program, and discusses its future. The authors conclude that the use of the clinically oriented approach will continue to prevail in medical humanities teaching, both at Loyola and in medical humanities programs overall. This approach challenges good teachers to make their best efforts at reconciling their own disciplines with that of medicine; in this process, a new medical humanities discipline emerges that is not so much an application of the humanities to medicine as it is an evocation of humanities themes from the clinical encounter itself.