Learning Medicine With, From, and Through the Humanities

One of the most enduring and widespread ideas about the practice of medicine is that it is both an art and a science. This chapter focuses on the pedagogical application of the humanities to medical and health professional curricula. It considers the issues around medical professionals learning with, from, and through the medical humanities. The chapter briefly addresses medical humanities in non-Western cultures and how this has been received and critiqued. It draws on a wide range of studies to illustrate the various ways the humanities have been incorporated into medical curricula. The chapter also considers two relatively underappreciated aspects of the place of the humanities in medical curricula: the perspective of students, and the implications of adopting the humanities in cross-cultural contexts. Providing students with experiential material is not sufficient to build empathy or understanding: it still allows room for spectating as opposed to witnessing.