medical humanities

medical humanities

Exploring the Intersection of Medicine and Humanity: An Overview of Medical Humanities

1. Introduction to Medical Humanities

Since then, the modern medical humanities movement has developed and is being used to enhance healthcare education and practice in a variety of ways. In this review, new theories and strategies of medical humanities are described. It is believed that teaching the humanities can promote the creation of more capable physicians by strengthening physicians’ ability to interpret their surroundings, interpret their relationships with other people, and maintain their self-care.

Indian traditions have a Susruta Samhita that addresses the relevance of bahyasaya of vida vidrike (factors involved in leading an outgoing mode of life) in producing a healthy person. It also talks about the four essential pillars of good health, namely “positives of geography, climate, social order, and the unique physiology of the person himself”. Such references illustrate that the relationship between science and the humanistic aspect of medicine was well appreciated in those times.

The attempt to retain the humane aspects in medicine resulted in humanizing the nature of medicine, and the combined effects of the humane and caring within medicine led to the introduction of the Medical Humanities. The “medical humanities” were first discussed in the mid-1960s in the United States, with the origins of the modern movement steeped in European traditions. Writing is described in antiquity as a “medicine for the soul” and indeed, it is central to the current practice of medicine.

In the Indian context, this is revealed in Charaka’s description of sadachara, a good doctor, who has intellectual ability, moral integrity, communication skills, and the use of soft hands. The Unani Kitab Al-Shifa includes the disciplining of the student’s morals, reciting of prayers, and celibacy.

Expansion of monetary markets and commercialization of medicine have led to an increase in diseases and hence the demand for pharmaceuticals. This, in turn, has been commoditized. Social injustice and uncertainty further affect human health and well-being. Medicine has been reduced to bio-molecular science, and healing practice is threatened. However, medicine is not mere science; it combines scientific knowledge with art, wisdom, compassion, and ethics.

2. Historical Development and Evolution of Medical Humanities

“Man has too narrow a throat. The answer is in art.” Yamazaki Kazue expressed this crucial understanding and encouraged medical students to be knowledgeable about social conditions, steeped in human nature, and to take on a broad, human skillfulness that college education should produce, in her speeches for the Medical Women Association and in lectures entrusted to her by Professor Morioka Sukusaburo, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Kyoto Imperial University. Fortified by this message, students mastered essential clinical skills through lively sports, rich in mental expression, overcoming deep concern to be able to provide medical treatment that is truly beneficial to the suffering patient. At the core of medicine lies charitable care of patients. Infused with broad human insight and a scholarship as a doctor, the physician seeks humanity built on the unique scientific foundation of medicine. To understand more about the intersection of medicine and humanity, these principles are shared from Yamazaki’s student days.

Medicine, based fundamentally on care for humankind, has evolved with advancements in human society. Culture and customs, shaped by a social environment, combine with the specialized therapeutic abilities of physicians. The result is a mutual understanding of the doctor-patient bond. Investigating the intersection between medicine and humanity has termed medical humanities. Both virtues, science and humanitarian effort, have equal standing in presenting medical merit. The development of medical humanities, just as the progression of medical technologies, was influenced by social conditions in specific historical contexts. Both fields of multi-medical science and multi-education refer to a necessity for new perspectives and solutions that must be used to address issues arising from contemporary civilization.

3. Key Concepts and Theoretical Frameworks in Medical Humanities

Theoretical Framework 2: A BMS Model-Based Ethics The BMS model intends to describe the essence of the patient by describing the proper central object of medicine—namely, the patient and human health—by considering the individual as a whole. The BMS model is ethical by stand-alone definition. In giving a model-based flavor to BMS ethics, it is worth mentioning that the classical model comprises different levels and deep characteristics. The deep features, strictly connected to biological and neurological systems, are strictly related to the body. At this level, many biological facts are irreducible and can either constrain or enable various aspects of the other two levels. These can be understood as sublevels strictly interlacing with each other and sometimes without any reference to causal relationships.

Theoretical Framework 1: Body–Mind–Soul Model The interdisciplinary and integrated perspective of the BMS model nurtured the development of medicine from being dominated by the biomedical model into being whole again with ensembles of the sciences, humanities, social sciences, and ethical standards. Biomedicine was crucial for establishing parameters of proof for concepts of health and disease. However, when it began to ignore the existential aspects of being, BMS theories did not disappear, and they have always played a parallel role. Today the BMS model is not a substitute or equivalent to the biomedical model, but it is increasingly complementary and/or integrated with it to represent significant progress in guaranteeing a positive holistic approach to each patient.

4. Applications and Case Studies in Medical Humanities

Human observation and representation have long been considered an important but problematic component of medical education and medical practice. Humanistic disciplines uniquely facilitate the acquisition of the “people skills” which are increasingly seen as the key to satisfying and effective practice. In the last few years, the consensus that humanistic concerns have retained their importance has hardened into calls for curriculum reform designed to focus more attention on the internal experience of both the patient and the doctor. Such calls – supported by evidence that medical students do, in fact, experience excessive personal distress in learning environments which pay little conscious attention to the fears and the human needs of the future medical practitioner – are among the driving forces behind a movement known in medical education circles as the “medical humanities.”

The medical humanities, a rather exclusive endeavor, have ventured to explore medicine and its practitioners as social entities influenced by the minds and bodies of human beings. Most of the endeavors, which include narrative medicine, history and philosophy of medicine, medical anthropology, social context of medical practice, creative expression, and various others, seek to broaden and balance the traditional methods used in medical education and practice. Although the applications of medical humanities in medical education and professionalism are a worldwide phenomenon, there are a few critiques from the scientific medicine community for its limited evidence. But medical humanities have evolved with new subjects. This paper presents a plethora of humanistic disciplines which are rather new as medical humanities.

5. Future Directions and Opportunities in the Field of Medical Humanities

With mental health drawing upon diverse and sometimes seemingly incompatible fields and disciplines – be they medicine and various humanities including philosophy and ethics, literary studies, religious studies, anthropology, or sociology – there are few interconnected principles that receive cross-disciplinary attention, and this scattered research is neither explicitly nor formally coordinated. As a result, in practice, mental health offers what looks more like a collection of isolated silos than a set of potentially harmonious synergies. Given the meticulous cage fighting that goes on not only between different ideologies and practices of medicine (e.g., traditional vs. novel; alternative vs. complementary; ethical vs. utilitarian) and between different stakeholders (e.g., patients, researchers, and participants as well as regulators, innovators, and industry) but also within mental health itself, persisting in this kind of isolated approach is likely to prove counterproductive, especially in terms of achieving the best possible outcomes for our patients, practitioners, and people at large.

The field of mental health is fairly vast yet quite uncoordinated, and its consensus definition is a matter of ongoing debate. As such, the most clear opportunity in the field is a need to provide definitional coherence to the field. Given the polysemous nature of mental health, a thorough comparison of what is meant by mental health is overdue. Furthermore, there exist many latent or active rivalries between perspectives within mental health as well as between mental health and medicine itself. At times, these interpersonal conflicts boil down to a seemingly simple and decisive matter of terminological preference; one party’s exposition provokes a dismissive response from another conflating difference with deficiency. To tolerate such partial perspectives is to enable medicine to become even more inhumane, and we believe this is the shared mission of mental health. In fact, just as the deterioration of physician-patient relationships is a serious threat to the broader corpus of medicine, we believe that persisting turf wars within mental health are not only a threat to its integrity but will also prevent it from realizing its mission in all its grandeur.