Should the Medical Humanities Be Vital to Curricula?

To the Editor: We find the recent appeal by Dr. Bleakley1 for early integration of medical humanities in educational curricula refreshingly warm. As medical students, we often notice the lens of skepticism through which our peers view the arts in medicine. After all, if material is unlikely to be tested on clinical rotations or standardized exams, it quickly falls to the bottom of a trainee’s list of priorities. As years progress, we learn that we are rewarded for memorizing differential diagnoses and clinical facts. Thus, spending precious time reflecting on a narrative poem or an abstract art piece becomes increasingly trivial. In doing so, however, our perspectives harden to the scientific mold of medicine. We begin seeing the body as a machine with faulty parts rather than a human being with empathetic needs. Although this is certainly natural and welcome during a physician’s professional development, we must not forget to acknowledge humanity along the process. By reminding us of our initial aspirations for pursuing medicine, Dr. Bleakley emphasizes the why, rather than the how, behind teaching the medical humanities. The author expresses that longitudinal, integrated curricula in the medical humanities can develop skills, such as navigating uncertainty as a basis to promoting patient–physician trust relations. His call for heightened awareness of this softer school of thought in the face of an often mechanical and traditionally patriarchal medical system is not new. Many have previously delineated and robustly studied the benefits of self-reflection using history, art, and literature in medicine. And yet, as these virtues have become more defined, incorporating the humanities into medical education has slowly morphed into an administrative, rather than a learner-centered, endeavor. We often ask: How do medical educators fit lessons of compassion into busy curriculum schedules when already pressed for time to teach the fundamentals of medicine? What long-term objective outcomes can be deciphered by exposing students to the arts early in their careers? Who will volunteer their time to influence medical trainees to embrace this seemingly subjective practice, when we are undeniably conditioned to achieve numerical accomplishments instead? We applaud Dr. Bleakley for ignoring these often-debated bureaucratic challenges and rather for approaching the topic with deeper meaning. Trainees in all aspects of medicine can profit from this philosophical outlook as motivation for learning lessons of compassion and humanity from a regularly forgotten but unquestionably vital piece of curriculum. Aleksandar RadonjicThird-year medical student, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada; [email protected]; ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0296-376X.Emily Louise EvansThird-year medical student, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada.

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