Integrating Literature into Medical Education
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Date
2019
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Uva Wellassa University of Sri Lanka
Abstract
Medicine has been said to be comprised of both science and art aspects. However, the growing demand in main stream subjects and clinical practicum, reduce students’ time for the medical humanities. According to Shapiro et al. (2009) there is an ongoing debate on how medical humanities should be integrated into medical education. Hence, this research aims to address the aforementioned issue and introduce a strategy to bridge medicine and humanities, in the field of medical education. In order to address the above, sessions themed under “Literature and medicine” were conducted at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Kelaniya as one of the Student Selected Components (SSC module). This SSC module is implemented for second year MBBS students. When conducting this SSC module, motion pictures, memoirs and non-fictions were used in classrooms as tools of utilization to improve students’ humanity towards others. Eight sessions were conducted for the participants where the motion pictures and non-fiction related to medical humanities were involved. Followed by, classroom discussions were done, based on the above material. After conducting the sessions, this mixed method study implemented questionnaires and interviews as the research instruments to obtain students’ feedback. The data was analyzed thematically. The results indicate that the participants preferred exposing to the field of literature, viewing them through the angle of medical humanities. Moreover, as for the outcome of the component, almost all the students had written poems, based on the plot of the motion pictures and the non-fiction. Thus, it is believed that the invention of literature programs in the field of medical humanities will strengthen the social responsibility that should be ingrained in medical education.
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Keywords
Humanities, English Literature, Education