Introduction to Medical Humanities

Why study medicine?

• Individual • Family • Society

What is medicine

• Science • Arts

Learning objectives

• • • • Physicians must be altruistic Physicians must be knowledgeable Physicians must be skillful Physicians must be dutiful Medical School Objectives Project Association of American Medical Colleges

What is humanities

• Systematic forms of study concerned with recording and interpreting human experience.

• Human body as intertwining of natural and existential dimensions • Typically include literature, history, philosophy, ethics, arts

What is medical humanities

• An interdisciplinary recording and interpreting of human experiences of illness, disability, medicine and health care • What unifies diverse disciplines: reflect the human experiences of medicine, seen through the humanities.

Windows to view medicine

• Literature and arts: appreciate metaphors people use to convey their experiences 培養觀察力與想像力 • History: evolution of contemporary medicine, draw on the past to reflect on the present and gauge the future, history taking • Philosophy: meaning of life

UCL center

• To raise awareness of medical humanities as an academic discipline • Medical humanities is an interdisciplinary, and increasingly international endeavor that draws on the creative and intellectual strengths of diverse disciplines, including literature, art, creative writing, drama, film, music, philosophy, ethical decision making, anthropology, and history, in pursuit of medical educational goal.

Educational objectives

• • • to connect with, or appreciate, the perspective of all those affected by illness: the person who is ill, the persons who love them, and the professionals involved in their care to facilitate reflection on the physician’s own practice, on its strengths and weaknesses, so that he or she can build on the former and address the latter to provide both cultural and historical perspectives on illness and health care

Search for meaning

• No need is so compelling as the need we all feel for our lives to make sense, to have meaning. We will tolerate almost any degree of austerity or risk in this indomitable quest for meaning.

Futurist and strategic thinker, Willis Harman

TMAC

• • • • • 醫學系的課程除了能灌輸學生行醫必備的基本理論與知識之外，同時也要傳授診治病人的技術，更要為學生建立終身學習的習性，培養敬業的精神，以及悲天憫人的胸懷，發展正確的生命價值觀，以建立醫師與病人之間互動，互相尊重而良好的關係。

Career Example

• Wayne Lewis was general practitioner who escaped the pressures of clinical medicine through literature (novels and poetry). He was frustrated by the divided intellectual life. Gradually, he started to use literature to teach medical students in discussion of medical ethics. After he completed an MA in medical humanities at Swansea, he got interested in philosophy of science and theology. This opened up new horizons and allowed him to reflect on his clinical activities in all sorts of unexpected ways. Practically, he was able to incorporate discussion of religious issues, particularly surrounding bereavement, into his practice. He became a lecturer teaching literature and philosophy to medical students at the University of Wales College of Medicine, and took up a post of lecturer in medical humanities at Swansea, teaching the MA course.

電影中的醫學世界

葉炳強台大神經部

Literature and Medicine:

Pathography & Illness Narrative

Yue-Joe Lee M.D.

College of Medicine National Taiwan University