Acquiring experience in medical humanities teaching: the chicken and egg conundrum
It is important to try to share with others the understanding gained from reflecting on what we do
Experience is the child of Thought, and Thought is the child of Action. We cannot learn men from books.1
So this is the conundrum. How do keen, but inexperienced and under resourced medical educators, follow up their growing enthusiasm for arts and humanities based medical education with high quality effective educational activities? In an ideal world, the encouragement to medical schools from the General Medical Council to incorporate medical humanities into their curriculum2 would have been matched with extra funding to develop and deliver these courses, and to provide support for the professional development of those responsible for this important educational input into the training of tomorrow’s doctors. The reality is that only three dedicated medical humanities academic posts exist in the UK. The response of educators to this challenge …
