The AMHH is delighted to announce a Medical Humanities Erasmus+ program in Sofia, Bulgaria. This program has been developed by longstanding AMH member Dr Vassilka Nikolova with support from AMH President Dr Jennifer Patterson and former council member Lisetta Lovette.
You can see the full program HERE
The Medical University of Sofia rectorate has invited University of Greenwich’s Dr Jennifer Patterson, Associate Professor of Sustainable Health Practices and Discourses, to participate in an Erasmus-funded initiative, helping medical staff and students from five European Universities from different countries to introduce the subject in their institutions. She will be giving the opening lecture “Education, knowledge and uncertainty – why learning about the humanities is imperative in better medical and health practice” and a further five workshops and seminars including “ideologies of ‘care”, “positioning the self” and critical analysis skills from Higher Education for reading images (fine art) and language (discourse).
Aiming for long-term impact on patient care
Members of the public frequently face communication issues when they become ill, facing not only the illness but also the challenges of navigating hospitals and an unfamiliar science-based world of clinics and surgeries with a language and a culture all of its own. The situation is worse for second-language speakers and the elderly. Indeed, medical and healthcare students almost exclusively study the scientific curriculum from the age of 16, transitioning into the world of medicine and healthcare. Yet it is the humanities and social sciences, not medicine, that teaches students about communication, culture and social differences.
In the UK, broadly speaking aspects of humanities have been initiated in several medical schools, either as electives or within the curriculum. This aspect of education comprises the work of the Association for Medical Humanities (a learned society and the oldest association of its kind in the world)
Dr Patterson is clear: “without patients, medicine would not exist. Medical and healthcare education is not separate from society, it is part of it. Educationally, it is teacher-led rather than learner-centred. Bio-medical values were based on measuring and determining absolute truth critical for diagnosis and treatment. This involved creating huge samples, inventing norms, and homogenising people and cultures so there is a recognised and increasing need to bring cultural and social knowledge, values and ethics from the humanities and social sciences back into health education to nuance and inform the scientific processes. After all, without patients, there would be no need for medicine. Moreover, the NHS is supposed to embrace a biopsychosocial model of healthcare that is still absent from much practice and we are increasingly aware that maintaining health is the best prevention of illness. Educationally, integrating knowledge from other disciplines not only helps communications and understanding patient perspectives, it helps healthcare workers address burnout and it informs better research practices. So, there is a real need for the humanities and social sciences to be reintegrated.”