This textbook uses concepts and methods of the humanities to enhance understanding of medicine and health care.

This ground-breaking book sets out a fresh vision for a future medical education by providing a radical reconceptualisation of the purposes of medical humanities through a lens of critical health psychology and liberatory pedagogy. The medical humanities are conceived as translational media through which reductive, instrumental biomedicine can be raised in quality, intensity, and complexity by embracing ethical, aesthetic, political, and transcendental values. This translation occurs through innovative use of metaphor. A note of caution is offered – that the medical humanities too can be instrumental and reductive if not framed well. Drawing on major theorists such as Michel Foucault and Jacques Rancière and bringing together insights from diverse but inter-related fields, Bleakley focuses on the "ills" of contemporary biomedicine and medical education, and the need for reconceptualisation, which – it is argued – the translational medical humanities have the potential to accomplish. Current instrumental approaches to medical humanities, embracing communication skills training and narrative-based medicine, have failed to address the chronic symptoms suffered by medicine. These include resort to closed, functional systems thinking rather than embracing dynamic, complex, open, and adaptive systems thinking; lack of democratic habits in medical culture, compromising patient safety and care; the production of insensibility rather than deepening of sensibility in medical education; a lack of attention to ethics, aesthetics, and politics where the instrumental is privileged; and a lack of critical reflexivity in revisioning habitual practices. Through persuasive argument, Bleakley sets out a more radical manifesto for the role the arts and humanities might play in medical/healthcare education and offers a new approach based on curriculum process rather than syllabus content, to recuperate aesthetic sensibilities, discernment, and affect in medicine. The book will appeal to medical and healthcare educators, medical and health humanities scholars, engaged clinicians, social scientists drawing on critical theory, and arts and humanities practitioners engaging with medical and healthcare themes.

The field of the medical humanities is developing rapidly, however, there has also been parallel concern from sceptics that the value of medical humanities educational interventions should be open to scrutiny and evidence. Just what is the impact of medical humanities provision upon the education of medical students? In an era of limited resources, is such provision worth the investment? This innovative text addresses these pressing questions, describes the contemporary territory comprising the medical humanities in medical education, and explains how this field may be developed as a key medical education component for the future. Bleakley, a driving force of the international movement to establish the medical humanities as a core and integrated provision in the medical curriculum, proposes a model that requires collaboration between patients, artists, humanities scholars, doctors and other health professionals, in developing medical students’ sensibility (clinical acumen based on close noticing) and sensitivity (ethical, professional and humane practice). In particular, this text focuses upon how medical humanities input into the curriculum can help to shape the identities of medical students as future doctors who are humane, caring, expressive and creative – whose work will be technically sound but considerably enhanced by their abilities to communicate well with patients and colleagues, to empathise, to be adaptive and innovative, and to act as ‘medical citizens’ in shaping a future medical culture as a model democracy where social justice is a key aspect of medicine. Making sense of the new wave of medical humanities in medical education scholarship that calls for a ‘critical medical humanities’, Medical Humanities and Medical Education incorporates a range of case studies and illustrative and practical examples to aid integrating medical humanities into the medical curriculum. It will be important reading for medical educators and others working with the medical education community, and all those interested in the medical humanities.

Following criticisms of the traditionally polarized view of understanding suffering through either medicine or social justice, Lowe makes a compelling argument for how the medical humanities can help to go beyond the traditional biographical and epistemic breaks to see into the nature and properties of suffering and what is at stake. Lowe demonstrates through analysis of major healthcare workforce issues and incidence of burnout how key policies and practices influence healthcare education and experiences of both patients and health professionals. By including first person narratives from health professionals as a tool and resource, she illustrates how dominant ideas about the self enter practice as a refusal of suffering. Demonstrating the relationship between personal experience, theory and research, Lowe argues for a pedagogy of suffering that shows how the moral anguish implicit in suffering is an ethical response of the emergent self. This is an important read for all those interested in medical humanities, health professional education, person-centred care and the sociology of health and illness.

Most medical schools in the US, Canada and UK now incorporate some form of arts and humanities-based teaching into their curricula. What happens in residency is another story. Most postgraduate programs do not continue the thread of such teaching although many residents would like to deepen their understanding of the medical humanities before they move into practice. The humanities emphasize "the human side of medicine", and can provide a counterpoint to the reductionism of evidence-based medicine and technological hubris for young doctors as they apply new knowledge and skills in ambiguous, real-life encounters with patients who are living with complicated health problems. Humanities-based education can help both sides of the relationship: programs are shown to reduce burnout and mental health issues in young physicians, and can also help learning practitioners grapple with the most difficult aspects of their craft: how does one persuade patients on a course of treatment, while respecting informed consent? How does one work with families? How does one listen to and treat patients exhibiting self-harm tendencies? Available research may demonstrate the efficacy of such exposures, but provide little practical advice or resources for setting up programs across specialty and sub-specialty disciplines. Health Humanities in Post-Graduate Medical Education will fill this gap in knowledge translation for the thousands of residency programs worldwide, allowing educators, supervisors, and residents themselves to create robust and educationally sound workshops, seminars, study groups, lecture series, research and arts-based projects, publications and events.

Teaching Health Humanities expands our understanding of the burgeoning field of health humanities and of what it aspires to be. The volume's contributors describe their different degree programs, the politics and perspectives that inform their teaching, and methods for incorporating newer digital and multimodal technologies into teaching practices. Each chapter lays out theories that guide contributors' pedagogy, describes its application to syllabus design, and includes, at the finer level, examples of lesson plans, class exercises, and/or textual analyses. Contributions also focus on pedagogies that integrate critical race, feminist, queer, disability, class, and age studies in courses, with most essays exemplifying intersectional approaches to these axes of difference and oppression. The culminating section includes chapters on teaching with digital technology, as well as descriptions of courses that bridge bioethics and music, medical humanities and podcasts, health humanities filmmaking, and visual arts in end-of-life care. By collecting scholars from a wide array of disciplinary specialties, professional ranks, and institutional affiliations, the volume offers a snapshot of the diverse ways medical/health humanities is practiced today and maps the diverse institutional locations where it is called upon to do work. It provides educators across diverse terrains myriad insights that will energize their teaching.

Introduces key concepts and debates in health humanities and the health professions. Keywords for Health Humanities provides a rich, interdisciplinary vocabulary for the burgeoning field of health humanities and, more broadly, for the study of medicine and health. Sixty-five entries by leading international scholars examine current practices, ideas, histories, and debates around health and illness, revealing the social, cultural, and political factors that structure health conditions and shape health outcomes. Presenting possibilities for health justice and social change, this volume exposes readers—from curious beginners to cultural analysts, from medical students to health care practitioners of all fields—to lively debates about the complexities of health and illness and their ethical and political implications. A study of the vocabulary that comprises and shapes a broad understanding of health and the practices of healthcare, Keywords for Health Humanities guides readers toward ways to communicate accurately and effectively while engaging in creative analytical thinking about health and healthcare in an increasingly complex world—one in which seemingly straightforward beliefs and decisions about individual and communal health represent increasingly contested terrain.

Research Methods in Health Humanities surveys the diverse and unique research methods used by scholars in the growing, transdisciplinary field of health humanities. Appropriate for advanced undergraduates, but rich enough to engage more seasoned students and scholars, this volume is an essential teaching and reference tool for health humanities teachers and scholars. Health humanities is a field committed to social justice and to applying expertise to real world concerns, creating research that translates to participants and communities in meaningful and useful ways. The chapters in this field-defining volume reflect these values by examining the human aspects of health and health care that are critical, reflective, textual, contextual, qualitative, and quantitative. Divided into four sections, the volume demonstrates how to conduct research on texts, contexts, people, and programs. Readers will find research methods from traditional disciplines adapted to health humanities work, such as close reading of diverse texts, archival research, ethnography, interviews, and surveys. The book also features transdisciplinary methods unique to the health humanities, such as health and social justice studies, digital health humanities, and community dialogues. Each chapter provides learning objectives, step-by-step instructions, resources, and exercises, with illustrations of the method provided by the authors' own research. An invaluable tool in learning, curricular development, and research design, this volume provides a grounding in the traditions of the humanities, fine arts, and social sciences for students considering health care careers, but also provides useful tools of inquiry for everyone, as we are all future patients and future caregivers of a loved one.