Now that I’m semi-retired, an elective course that I developed and taught for fourth-year medical students is retiring with me. I’m writing about it here, in the hope that other medical humanities educators might wish to adapt it for their teaching — it was very well received by participating students and, I think, served a useful function.

Commentary by Deirdre Neilen, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Center for Bioethics & Humanities, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse NY, and editor, The Healing Muse We are finalizing our eighth issue of …

How can trekking be related to the humanities? On first glance these two appear very different.

The oral history exercise I have designed for my health advocacy graduate students is a way for them to see ‘narrative in motion’ – not only applying the theoretical ideas we discuss in class, but using some of the autobiographical texts we read to deepen their understanding of their oral history interviews.

Maybe it’s because classrooms are now routinely video-equipped, or because, as an attention-challenged culture, most of us have come to expect power point or other visual “enhancements” in the lecture hall, or because movies can be so efficient in conveying an idea, or maybe it’s simply because we love them so very much, that movies are being used more and more commonly in medical and nursing schools…

In the last few years in the UK there has been an increasing awareness of the value of the arts as a part of the formation of a rounded doctor. In some ways this represents a return to traditional values.