Medhums BMJ new call for papers
Medicine, Meaning and Metaphor: Arts and Humanities as essential partners in medical and healthcare training
This special issue will examine the way training in arts and humanities can interrogate and illuminate the role of meaning in clinical encounters and the experience of illness. It will showcase ways in which methodologies from the arts and humanities can help healthcare students understand and navigate the relationships between bodies, health, illness, death, community, culture and self, asking what does it mean to be and to have a body and what happens when minds and bodies fail? These complex questions play a fundamental role in the practice of healthcare, are core to the humanities, visual and performing arts but are not yet mandatory in UG or PG medical training.
The collection brings together materials which unpick the diversity and importance of ‘meaning’ to healthcare professionals and patients. It provides concrete and inspirational examples of cutting-edge arts, humanities and transdisciplinary practices, across the globe, that can contribute to clinical training and argue for further arts and humanities teaching in medical schools and post graduate education for doctors and healthcare professionals.
Submission Deadline: 27 October 2026
Submit your paper: Topic Collection: Medicine, Meaning and Metaphor | Medical Humanities