In the first issue of this journal, Education and Debate asked whether medical humanities would help make better doctors or just happier ones.¹ That question begs a number of others, among them: what is a good doctor, what attributes might such a doctor possess, and are there different kinds of good doctors that medical educators should be helping to graduate?

Appropriately, the focus of much of the published data on arts and humanities based medical education is on equipping doctors with the skills, knowledge, and attitudes necessary for clinical practice. The emphasis, either explicitly or implicitly, is on the doctor/patient interaction, and on the role of medical humanities in enhancing the quality of that interaction. The ability to appreciate the perspective of all those affected by illness, to reflect on one’s own practice, and to contextualise the lived experience of illness, socially, culturally, and historically are among the objectives ascribed to medical humanities teaching.

By contrast, the Education and Debate paper in this issue describes a medical humanities …