I read something about the "medical humanities".  What is that?

Modern healthcare is a wide, wide field that is experiencing rapid change and rapid growth. Healthcare is much more than a matter of scientific thinking and high-tech instrumentation.  It often involves life-or-death communication in situations of psychological and biological stress or crisis; with possible cultural or language complications; with religious and ethical consequences.  It requires powers of observation and logic that befit the artist and the engineer, both.  Healthcare is a big influence on our country's politics and economics, as well as our daily lives. 

The medical humanities encompass these non-math, non-life science disciplines that nevertheless have intimate and important relationships with medical practice.  Graduate healthcare programs, such as medical schools,  increasingly include the medical humanities in their curricula because they see the value the humanities bring to the whole professional. 

At UW Oshkosh, we routinely advise undergraduates to complete General Education requirements, or even majors or minors, utilizing the rich menu of medical humanities courses already in place in our curriculum.

From the mission statement of the McGovern Center for Health, Humanities and the Human Spirit:  The Center concentrates its work in three basic areas: Medical Humanities, Ethics and Professionalism - Health and the Human Spirit - Medicine, Media and the Arts.  Center Faculty and Associate Faculty teach, conduct research and develop change interventions which aim at personal and workplace transformation. We work in the gaps: Between the real and the ideal; between mystery and mastery; between molecules and meaning - the fast-paced, scientific/technological world of medicine and the power of the human spirit in healing. To enhance humanism in medicine, didactic teaching is essential but not sufficient---it is also necessary to nourish the inner life of students and faculty. As Sir William Osler understood, we must "educate both the head and the heart." The Center's focus is holistic: we aim to educate the emotions as well as the intellect, to nurture the human spirit as well as train the exemplary professional.

From New York University's Medical Humanities Mission Statement: We define the term "medical humanities" broadly to include an interdisciplinary field of humanities (literature, philosophy, ethics, history and religion), social science (anthropology, cultural studies, psychology, sociology), and the arts (literature, theater, film, and visual arts) and their application to medical education and practice. The humanities and arts provide insight into the human condition, suffering, personhood, our responsibility to each other, and offer a historical perspective on medical practice. Attention to literature and the arts helps to develop and nurture skills of observation, analysis, empathy, and self-reflection -- skills that are essential for humane medical care. The social sciences help us to understand how bioscience and medicine take place within cultural and social contexts and how culture interacts with the individual experience of illness and the way medicine is practiced.

From the University of Texas Medical Branch's Institute of Medical Humanities:  In today's often bewildering world of scientific, technological, cultural, and political changes, medicine faces human problems and possibilities that transcend traditional academic disciplines. Members of the Institute engage in research on ethical and legal problems in clinical practice and biomedical research; and on philosophical, historical, visual, literary, and religious dimensions of medicine and health care. This broad-gauged inquiry provides the foundation for the activities of the Institute faculty in medical and graduate teaching, clinical ethics consultation, and health policy analysis locally and in state, national, and international academic and public forums.

From the University of Connecticut's Division of Medical Humanities: In 1972 the University of Connecticut School of Medicine established a Division of Humanistic Studies in Medicine in the Department of Community Medicine and Health Care; it was one of the first medical schools in the nation to do so. Originally, the division was to focus primarily upon the growing discipline of biomedical ethics, but to include also the humanities — philosophy, history, literature, and theology — as these touched upon the science and art of medicine. Through the division a course in ethics and health law became, under the late Jay Healey and his associates, a requirement for first-year medical and dental students and one of the most popular courses in the curriculum. Over the years, the Graduate Program in Public health, also located in the Department of Community Medicine, has drawn on the faculty of the Division and developed a required course in Public Health Law and offering others in the history of public health and ethical issues. Over the last 30 years, biomedical ethics, humanities, and law occupy an essential place in the medical, dental and public health curricula at the University of Connecticut. As the organization of heath care becomes more complex, and as business and commercial interests intrude on all aspects of medical practice, ethics, morality, jurisprudence, and legal issues have taken on more importance.

From the University of Pittsburgh' Health Sciences Library System's Recent Dissertations in the Medical Humanities; select readings from topics such as Alternative Medicine, Art and Medicine, History of Medicine, Literature/Theater and Medicine, Nursing History, and Religion and Medicine.