Three members of the AMH, The President, Dr Jennifer Patterson, eminent historian, Dr Lisetta Lovett, and ethicist Dr Rainer Brömer travelled to the Medical University of Sofia in early April to assist long time member Association member Dr Vassilka Nikolova in holding a conference in Medical Humanities to inform an Erasmus BIP with medical staff and students from five European Universities, including colleagues teaching Medical Humanities at the University of Crete, and a range of international colleagues. Prof. Dr. Alexandrina Vodenicharova, Dean of the Faculty of Public Health at The Medical University of Sofia and her colleagues announced at the Conference that a survey of its students will see the integration of Medical Humanities and Bioethics as a core curriculum subject, across some 11,000 students.
Lisetta combined 30 years of experience as a consultant psychiatrist and her specialisation in Casanova’s memoirs to consider historical values and to probe 17th and 18th Century history for discussions of suicide, and patient doctor relationships. Insightful anecdotes from Casanova’s life were pertinent for applied ethical practice. Speaking of the Marseilles plague, she demonstrated how learning from the past is imperative, showing how Covid medics could have learned much from those earlier events and practices and how surprisingly relevant they still are.
Rainer gave a fascinating talk on his work on ethical practices in dealing with issues of informed consent. This raised questions around objects and possessions, particularly in museums, and how we should act when there has been no prior informed consent. He also thoughtfully raised challenges around alternatives to biomedicine.
There were other great lectures from international colleagues and Jennifer gave the keynote “Education, knowledge and uncertainty – why learning about the humanities is imperative in better medical and health practice”, bringing knowledge-making from different disciplines together to explore and challenge the underpinning values, examining how we know what we know. She led a further five workshops and seminars, including “ideologies of ‘care”, “herbs for doctors”, “positioning the self, and shared critical analysis skills from Higher Education for reading images (fine art) and language (discourse) with students who particularly enjoyed the usefulness of workshops.
Two things are critical:
- It’s always important to remember that medical and healthcare education is not separate from society, it is part of i.t
- Without patients, medicine would not exist.
There is an increasingly recognised need to bring cultural and social knowledge, values and ethics from the humanities and social sciences into health education to nuance and inform scientific processes and to support those who have taken the responsibility to care for others.
