Medical humanities in undergraduate medical education—moving on
- Senior Lecturer and Co-director, The Centre for Medical Humanities, Department of Primary Care & Population Sciences, Royal Free & University College Medical School, Archway Campus, 4th Floor, Holborn Union Building, Highgate Hill London N19 3UA, UK; r.meakin@pcps.ucl.ac.uk
A national association would help to promote the value of medical humanities in medical education
In his description of the development of the history of medicine's role in the undergraduate curriculum at the University of Birmingham Medical School,1 Arnott tells an encouraging story. Arnott's experience reflects that of other reported medical humanities developments in the undergraduate curriculum in that they are well received by medical students but with the exception of medical ethics they are virtually all non-core courses.2–5 Both Evans and Macnaughton have made coherent arguments for the introduction of integrative medical humanities courses into the core curriculum.6 Arnott's disappointment at the slowness of medical humanities' integration into the medical curriculum will be shared, however, by many medical educators in the field. When our colleagues in medical schools are confronted by this, …
