Introduction
Unlike most disciplines of medicine, medical humanity covers a wide range of fields, including social sciences, arts, and humanities. This field of study is the most complex, involving, and considerate because it seeks to strengthen the quality and practices of the involved activities of medical humanities. The discipline is important because it sheds light on human suffering and illness, individual perception, and other human conditions. The fields covered in medical humanities are critical to better quality education of the doctors in the future. Thus, medical humanities combine various disciplines to promote better medical practices hence improving the understanding of medicine.
Meaning of Medical Humanities
Medical humanities are a field of study covering arts, humanities, and social sciences and their use in medical education and services. In humanities, the interdisciplinary studies of religion, ethics, history, philosophy, and comparative literature, in arts are theater, literature, visual arts, and films. At the same time, social sciences are sociology, psychology, health geography, cultural studies, and anthropology (Mema et al. 3). Medical humanities consider illnesses and health from a wider perspective than those used in medicine or history. Through the interdisciplinary, researchers use humanities to view the experiences, contexts, and conceptual and critical healthcare problems. The studies also employ historical sources, such as media and historical documents.
The major aim of medical humanities is to provide answers to health-related questions that impact human experiences. Some of these questions include: What are an illness and its social elements? What is health? How can gender, class, or racial inequalities influence individual access to medical help? (Mema et al. 4). Medical humanities have the perspective that illnesses are unique experiences that are covered by human civilization. Thus, considering all aspects of human life and experiences is critical to finding the best answers to such questions (Mema et al. 4). Medical humanities are also significant in clearing disease-related myths about women that have become the trope of women in the modern generation.
Impact of Medical Humanities on Medicine and Vice Versa
Medical humanities have a great and positive impact on medicine by offering insight into suffering and illness, perception, and human conditions. It also shed light on professionalism and duties to self and others, patients and colleagues (Orefice and Baños 3). The sciences studied in medical humanities are important in providing higher quality education for future physicians and doctors. The medical education that this field of study offers transmits skills and knowledge while articulating attitudes and values well-balanced and integrated (Orefice and Baños 3). While enjoying the medical education that prepares them to be competent physicians, medical undergraduates enjoy the wider coverage of science.
Clinical judgment is a large and critical part of delivering high-quality healthcare services. The process involves clinical observation and is significant for medical decision-making. Clinical judgment entails collecting data, pinpointing key elements between them, and identifying patterns of data collected and its interpretation. Medicine encourages all doctors to develop clinical acumen by understanding the clinical reasoning process, where medical humanities come in (Orefice and Baños 2). Medical humanities help future doctors form the best clinical reasoning strategies by exploring various medical-related aspects in humanities, arts, and sciences. Competent physicians are expected to visualize and understand clinical images for diagnosis. Such skills of correct judgment are refined through experiences and study.
Medicine has an important and positive impact on medical humanities based on what the two disciplines have. They share the ideas of human conditions, illnesses, and suffering (Orefice and Baños 3). Medicine also teaches communication skills, self-awareness, and professionalism which are important in medical humanities. In medical humanities, providing solutions to diseases and illnesses is not possible without medicine’s contribution (Orefice and Baños 3). Furthermore, most of the fields employed in making medical humanities are also used in medicine. Medicine encourages work ethics to provide equal healthcare services to all patients. Medical humanities take the study of ethics alongside others to ensure the same purpose is achieved.
Medical humanities as a study were developed to challenge medicine and its practices. It sought to make medicine better by covering a wider range of human perspectives but just biological. According to Orefice and Banos, medicine impacts medical humanities by leaving gaps in human experiences in connection with health to be filled (16). Consequently, when applied in medicine, humanities improve medicine concepts, thus perfecting the quality of healthcare services offered by physicians. Medicine also offers insight into what medical humanities focus on. For example, medicine leaves the question: Why would people get sick by covering health and the need for healing? (Orefice and Baños 21). Medical humanities then are obligated to answer the question by looking at people’s culture, geography, religion, and other related aspects.
How Medical Humanities Inform Popular and Expert understandings of Medicine
The development of therapeutic advances and modern science in the 20th century has caused the interest of physicians and other experts to shift from patient to disease. As the development of evidence-based medicine arrives, more inequalities in healthcare access continue (Buts et al. 3). Consequently, the doctor-patient relationship worsens as patients believe that doctors are only concerned with treating the disease and not caring for their well-being. These worries have pushed the need to humanize the process of healthcare delivery hence the need for medical humanities. Medical humanities apply various aspects of learning to inform experts about medicine.
Humanities deploy literature, visual arts, philosophy, and history to better understand medicine to students, physicians, and other concerned experts. Humanities have become a cornerstone of higher education, especially in the Western where all humanity disciplines are made compulsory for students (Buts et al. 7). In medicine, humanities are important to promote empathy during physician training. Medical humanities are critical because they help medical experts understand medicine as a field that cares for more than biological processes and patient life experiences for better treatment.
Literature is used as an educational opportunity to use humanity in imparting knowledge to experts about medicine. Through literature, experts are encouraged to focus on understanding patient care and have morals (Orefice and Baños 23). In recent years, the use of literature has been experienced through patients’ narratives, literary texts to understand some diseases, and the possibilities of understanding various medicines. Literature is critical in medicine because it provides a deep understanding that experts may not have.
Visual arts as a form of humanity are applied to understand medicine, especially through movies. A movie about medicine is a form of education for both medical students and physicians (Buts et al. 8). Medical humanities make it easy for those that may not easily understand the theory of medicine. For example, using a movie, pharmacological education can be applied to the plot story. Through watching these movies, medical experts and patients can have a clear understanding of pharmacological needs.
Over time, teaching humanities amongst medicine students shows that students like studying the history of medicine rather than ethics. History of medicine is important for students willing to advance their knowledge in medicine. The history of medicine taught through medical humanities sheds light on the development and foundation of medicine (Orefice and Baños 33). Students and medical experts need to answer questions about the need for mediation. The history of medicine in the field of medicine has lost its importance. Therefore, learning humanities study gives insight into medicine and the need to revive it (Orefice and Baños 43). The inclusion of humanities in medicine has given students and experts the exposure needed to understand the world of medicine from a human perspective.
Conclusion
Medical humanities are essential, especially for medicine pursuing students seeking to be better doctors. The humanities sharpen students to care for patients from a biological perspective and a social and environmental view. Medicine and medical humanities cannot be separated because they share too many opinions and beliefs about human healthcare needs. As medicine leaves a gap in understanding the process of patient treatment, medical humanities, such as cultural studies and ethics, fill the gaps. Medical students and experts use the humanities to obtain an extra understanding of medicine that may not be obtained by taking a medicine course alone. Therefore, as the need to show empathy and compassion to patients during care delivery, the need for humanities in medicine increases. It is by combining medicine and humanity that physicians can deliver high-quality healthcare to patients.
Works Cited
Buts, Jan, et al. “Epistemologies of Evidence-Based Medicine: A Plea for Corpus-Based Conceptual Research in the Medical Humanities.” Medicine, Health Care, and Philosophy, 2021, pp. 1-12.
Mema, Briseida, et al. “Arts and ARDS: The Critical Importance of Medical Humanities.” Chest vol. 160. no. 4, 2021, pp. 1-4.
Orefice, Carlo, and Josep Eladi Baños. The Role of Humanities in the Teaching of Medical Students. Fundación Dr. Antonio Esteve, 2018, pp. 1-150.