Health humanities for inclusive, globally interdependent, supportive and decolonised health professional education: The future is health humanities!

Sandra Carr; Claire Hooker

doi:10.11157/fohpe.v24i4.721

Authors

Sandra Carr The University of Western Australia, Australia https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0043-4362
Claire Hooker The University of Sydney, Australia https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2347-6602

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.11157/fohpe.v24i4.721

Keywords:

health humanities , health professional education, graduate capabilities, domains of learning

Abstract

To find its place in healthcare that is responsive to global determinants of health and adaptively shape healthcare systems, health professional education (HPE) requires deep and central engagement with arts, culture and the health humanities. In this paper, we overview the trajectory of health humanities and the centrality of humanities scholarship in grappling with coloniality and power as ongoing features of health and healthcare. We then discuss current research that asks how arts and humanities can best be incorporated in HPE. Drawing from a recent Worldwide Universities Network initiative, we set out a framework comprising six domains of learning and 11 graduate capabilities that can be used to implement and evaluate health humanities education. Health humanities offers an invitation for imaginative and joyful innovations in HPE over the next 50 years.

References

Atkinson, S., Evans, B., Woods, A., & Kearns, R. (2015). “The medical” and “health” in a critical medical humanities. The Journal of Medical Humanities, 36(1), 71–81. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-014-9314-4

Azad, A. H., Khan, S. A., Ali, I., Shafi, H., Khan, N. A., & Umar, S. A. (2022). Experience of psychologists in the delivery of cognitive behaviour therapy in a non-western culture for treatment of substance abuse: A qualitative study. International Journal of Mental Health Systems, 16(1), Article 55. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13033-022-00566-3

Banner, O., Carlin, N., & Cole, T. R. (2019). Teaching health humanities. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/med/9780190636890.001.0001

Bartz, R. (1999). Beyond the biopsychosocial model: New approaches to doctor–patient interactions. The Journal of Family Practice, 48(8), 601–607. https://www.mdedge.com/familymedicine/article/60973/beyond-biopsychosocial-model-new-approaches-doctor-patient-interactions

Bleakley, A. D. (2015). Medical humanities and medical education: How the medical humanities can shape better doctors. Routledge. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uwa/detail.action?docID=1982471

Boulton, J. (2016). Aboriginal children, history and health beyond social determinants. Taylor and Francis. https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/informit.935131372295219

Brand, G., Osborne, A., Carroll, M., Carr, S. E., & Etherton-Beer, C. (2016). Do photographs, older adults' narratives and collaborative dialogue foster anticipatory reflection ("preflection") in medical students? BMC Medical Education, 16, Article 289. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-016-0802-2

Brody, H. (2011). Defining the medical humanities: Three conceptions and three narratives. The Journal of Medical Humanities, 32(1), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-009-9094-4

Came, H. (2020). From gorse to ngahere: An emerging allegory for decolonising the New Zealand health system. New Zealand Medical Journal, 133(1524), 102–110. https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/gorse-ngahere-emerging-allegory-decolonising-new/docview/2456177044/se-2

Campbell, B. H., Treat, R., Johnson, B., & Derse, A. R. (2020). Creating reflective space for reflective and “unreflective” medical students: Exploring seminal moments in a large-group writing session. Academic Medicine, 95(6), 882–887. https://doi.org/10.1097/ACM.0000000000003241

Carr, S., Harris, A., Scott, K., Ani-Amponsah, M., Hooker, C., Phillips, B., Noya, F., Mavaddat, N., Vuillermin, D., Reid, S., & Brett-MacLean, P. (2022). InspirE5: A participatory, internationally informed framework for health humanities curricula in health professions education. BMC Medical Education, 22, Article 490. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-022-03551-z

Carr, S., Noya, F., Phillips, B., Harris, A., Scott, K., Hooker, C., Mavaddat, N., Ani-Amponsah, M., Vuillermin, D., Reid, S., & Brett-MacLean, P. (2021). Health Humanities curriculum and evaluation in health professions education: A scoping review. BMC Medical Education, 21, Article 568. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-021-03002-1

Charon, R. (2001). Narrative medicine: A model for empathy, reflection, profession, and trust. JAMA, 286(15), 1897–1902. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.286.15.1897

Clark, Z., Ashbrooke, L., & Price, J. (2019). Creating meaningful learning for children’s nursing students: Can museum field trips offer added value? Comprehensive Child and Adolescent Nursing, 42(1), 71–84. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694193.2017.1390008

Clift, S. (2020). Fancourt, D. and Finn, S. (2019). What is the evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-being? A scoping review. Nordic Journal of Arts, Culture and Health, 2(1), 77–83. https://doi.org/10.18261/issn.2535-7913-2020-01-08

Costa, M., Kangasjarvi, E., & Charise, A. (2020). Beyond empathy: A qualitative exploration of arts and humanities in pre-professional (baccalaureate) health education. Advances in Health Sciences Education: Theory and Practice, 25(5), 1203–1226. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10459-020-09964-z

Crawford, P., & Brown, B. (2020). Health humanities: A democratising future beyond medical humanities. In A. Bleakley (Ed.), Routledge Handbook of the Medical Humanities (pp. 401–409). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351241779

Crossley, M. (2008). Critical health psychology: Developing and refining the approach. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2(1), 21–33. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2007.00041.x

Davies, C., Knuiman, M., & Rosenberg, M. (2016). The art of being mentally healthy: A study to quantify the relationship between recreational arts engagement and mental well-being in the general population. BMC Public Health, 16(12), Article 15. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-015-2672-7

De Leeuw, S., Larstone, R., Fell, B., Cross, N., Greenwood, M., Auerbach, K., & Sutherland, J. (2021). Educating medical students’ “hearts and minds”: A humanities-informed cultural immersion program in indigenous experiential community learning. International Journal of Indigenous Health, 16(1), 87–107. https://doi.org/10.32799/ijih.v16i1.33078

Dow, R., Warran, K., Letrondo, P., & Fancourt, D. (2023). The arts in public health policy: Progress and opportunities. The Lancet Public Health, 8(2), e155–e160. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-2667(22)00313-9

Eichbaum, Q., Reid, S., Coly, A., Naidu, T., & Omaswa, F. (2019). Conceptualizing medical humanities programs in low-resource settings in Africa. Academic Medicine, 94(8), 1108–1114. https://doi.org/10.1097/ACM.0000000000002789

Emmanuel, E. N. (2016). Teaching humanity to nursing students: Evaluation of an innovative teaching strategy. Nurse Education, 41(5), E1–E3. https://doi.org/10.1097/nne.0000000000000299

Fancourt, D., & Finn, S. (2019). What is the evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-being? A scoping review. Nordic Journal of Arts, Culture and Health, 2(1), 77–83. https://doi.org/10.18261/issn.2535-7913-2020-01-08

Farmer, P. E., Nizeye, B., Stulac, S., & Keshavjee, S. (2006). Structural violence and clinical medicine. PLoS Medicine, 3(10), e449. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0030449

Frank, A. W. (2017). What is narrative medicine?: The principles and practice of narrative medicine by Rita Charon, Sayantani DasGupta, Nellie Hermann, Craig Irvine, Eric R. Marcus, Edgar Rivera Colón, Danielle Spencer, and Maura Spiegel, Oxford University Press, 2017. Journal of Medical Humanities, 38(3), 339–343. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-017-9464-2

Gillies, J. (2018). Compassion, medical humanities and medical education. Education for Primary Care, 29(2), 68–70. https://doi.org/10.1080/14739879.2018.1427004

Gohar, F., Maschmeyer, P., Mfarrej, B., Lemaire, M., Wedderburn, L. R., Roncarolo, M. G., & van Royen-Kerkhof, A. (2019). Driving medical innovation through interdisciplinarity: Unique opportunities and challenges. Frontiers in Medicine, 6, 35. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmed.2019.00035

Hassan, N., & Howell, J. (2022). Global health humanities in transition. Medical Humanities, 48(2), 133–137. https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2022-012448

Hooker, C. (2015). Understanding empathy: Why phenomenology and hermeneutics can help medical education and practice. Medicine, Health Care, and Philosophy, 18(4), 541–552. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-015-9631-z

Hooker, C., & Noonan, E. (2011). Medical humanities as expressive of western culture. Medical Humanities, 37(2), 79–84. https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2011-010120

Hooker, C., Phillips, B., Carr, S. (2023). Health and medical humanities in global health: From the Anglocentric to the Anthropocene. In P. Liamputtong (Ed.), Handbook of Social Sciences and Global Public Health. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96778-9_14-1

Isaac, C., Behar‐Horenstein, L., Lee, B., & Catalanotto, F. (2015). Impact of reflective writing assignments on dental students’ views of cultural competence and diversity. Journal of Dental Education, 79(3), 312–321. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.0022-0337.2015.79.3.tb05886.x

Jones, T., Blackie, M., Garden, R., & Wear, D. (2017). The almost right word: The move from medical to health humanities. Academic Medicine, 92(7), 932–935. https://doi.org/10.1097/ACM.0000000000001518

Komattil, R., Handattu Hande, S., Mohammed, C. A., & Subramaniam, B. (2016). Evaluation of a personal and professional development module in an undergraduate medical curriculum in India. Korean Journal of Medical Education, 28(1), 117–121. https://doi.org/10.3946/kjme.2016.17

LeBlanc, R. G. (2017). Digital story telling in social justice nursing education. Public Health Nursing, 34(4), 395–400. https://doi.org/10.1111/phn.12337

Lewis, D., Williams, L., & Jones, R. (2020). A radical revision of the public health response to environmental crisis in a warming world: Contributions of Indigenous knowledges and Indigenous feminist perspectives. Canadian Journal of Public Health, 111(6), 897–900. https://doi.org/10.17269/s41997-020-00388-1

Macneill, P., Joseph, R., Lysaght, T., Samarasekera, D. D., & Hooi, S. C. (2020). A professionalism program in medical education and training: From broad values to specific applications: YLL School of Medicine, Singapore. Medical Teacher, 42(5), 561–571. https://doi.org/10.1080/0142159X.2020.1714021

Mangione, S., Chakraborti, C., Staltari, G., Harrison, R., Tunkel, A. R., Liou, K. T., Cerceo, E., Voeller, M., Bedwell, W. L, Fletcher, K., Kahn, M. J. (2018). Medical students' exposure to the humanities correlates with positive personal qualities and reduced burnout: A multi-institutional U.S. survey. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 33(5), 628–634. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-017-4275-8

McCaffrey, G., Venturato, L., Patterson, J. D., Langille, J., Jackson, R., & Rosenal, T. (2017). Bringing a novel to practice: An interpretive study of reading a novel in an undergraduate nursing practicum course. Nurse Education in Practice, 24, 84–89. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nepr.2017.04.001

Naidu, T. (2021). Southern exposure: Levelling the northern tilt in global medical and medical humanities education. Advances in Health Sciences Education: Theory and Practice, 26(2), 739–752. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10459-020-09976-9

Quijano, A. (2007). Coloniality and modernity/rationality. Cultural Studies, 21(2–3), 168–178. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601164353

Rocque, R. J., Beaudoin, C., Ndjaboue, R., Cameron, L., Poirier-Bergeron, L., Poulin-Rheault, R.-A., Fallon, C., Tricco, A. C., & Witteman, H. O. (2021). Health effects of climate change: An overview of systematic reviews. BMJ Open, 11(6), e046333–e046333. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-046333

Scott, K. (2020). Editorial, Vol 21.2. Focus on Health Professional Education, 21(2), i–iii. https://doi.org/10.11157/fohpe.v21i2.471

Sherwood, J. (2013). Colonisation—It's bad for your health: The context of Aboriginal health. Contemporary Nurse: A Journal for the Australian Nursing Profession, 46(1), 28–40. https://doi.org/10.5172/conu.2013.46.1.28

Smye, S. W., & Frangi, A. F. (2021). Interdisciplinary research: Shaping the healthcare of the future. Future Healthcare Journal, 8(2), e218–e223. https://doi.org/10.7861/fhj.2021-0025

Thorp, L., & Bassendowski, S. (2018). Caring values and the simulation environment: An interpretive description study examining select baccalaureate nursing students’ experiences. International Journal of Human Caring, 22(3), 68–81. https://doi.org/10.20467/1091-5710.22.3.68

Verghese, A. (2009). A touch of sense. Health Affairs, 28(4), 1177–1182. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.28.4.1177

Wald, H. S., McFarland, J., & Markovina, I. (2019). Medical humanities in medical education and practice. Medical Teacher, 41(5), 492–496. https://doi.org/10.1080/0142159X.2018.1497151

Whitehead, A., & Woods, A. (2016). The Edinburgh companion to the critical medical humanities. Edinburgh University Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1bgzddd.1

Worldwide Universities Network. (2021). WUN health humanities initiative: Towards the development of the patient-centred and compassionate health professional through education. https://wun.ac.uk/wun/research/view/wun-health-humanities-initiative-towards-the-development-of-the-patient-centred-and-compassionate-health-professional-through-education/