A Review of Literature on Medical Humanities
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Journal of Critical Reviews ISSN- 2394-5125 Vol 7, Issue 12, 2020 INTEGRATING HEALTH AND THE HUMANITIES CURRICULUM: A REVIEW OF LITERATURE ON MEDICAL HUMANITIES Shibashish Purkayastha PhD Research Scholar (English), Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati. Email ID: [email protected] Received: 10.03.2020 Revised: 11.04.2020 Accepted: 12.05.2020 Abstract This paper intends to survey a portion of the extant scholarship in the field of Medical Humanities and examining its significance to the investigation of clinical training and the humanities. It will likewise review a few works of fiction and non-fiction which narrativize illness from the perspective of the physician and the patient. By investigating the existing literature in the field, the paper seeks to uphold the fact that the intervention of the humanities into the domain of medical sciences has improved and in fact, enriched the field. Medical Humanities is an evolving scholastic discipline, an interdisciplinary field of enquiry that draws on history, politics, literature, cultural theory, drama, bioethics, religion and investigates their interrelationships. It looks to analyze how they can be coordinated for a bigger strategy execution and praxis. This article maintains that, by consolidating the information from each of these fields and coordinating it to clinical practice and humanities and the social sciences can indeed be a worthy move. Keywords: medical humanities, social sciences, curriculum, narrative medicine, interdisciplinarity © 2020 by Advance Scientific Research. This is an open-access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.31838/jcr.07.12.88 INTRODUCTION Ethics extensively alludes to the ethics of healthcare. It A portion of the significant objectives of clinical sciences was develops in consonance with science and technology. For the scattering of logical information, commitments to the field example, for a case which identifies with body enhancements of clinical instruction and advancement of moral enquiry in the in which the ethics of the training are questioned on the field of scientific research and clinical practice. As Des grounds that bio-clinical practices are making changes to the Fitzgerald and Felicity Callard in their essay “Entangling the individual’s body to improve its appearance. Clinical Ethics Medical Humanities” contend that the Medical Humanities is an alludes to the feeling of regard that healthcare experts have for interdisciplinary undertaking with an integrationist intent the patients’ families. This brings into question a specific (Fitzgerald and Callard, 2016). They further proceed to connect professionalism, expertise and respectability that they have to it to the different contraptions of biomedical sciences. In spite their patients. Literature and Medicine is an amalgamation of of the fact that the way of thinking of medication has picked up the literary and the clinical practice. The basis for utilizing momentum in the ongoing years, very little consideration has literature in medication is threefold: perusing the accounts of been given to it. As Michal Lytovka opines that, it tends to be patients and expounding on their encounters gives specialists a helpful to apply certain philosophical precepts throughout the superior comprehension to analyze their patients, it history of medicine, medical ethics, literature and medication, additionally brings the partialities and the inclinations of the amongst others (Lytovka, 2017). This contention set forth by clinical professional into the center and it requires critical Lytovka will be helpful in my assessment of the current thinking and mindfulness about these issues in medication. assemblage of information that manages the mediation of Brian Dolan in his exposition “One Hundred Years of Medical clinical humanities into the field of literature and social Humanities: A Thematic Overview” proceeds to clarify that the investigations. I will allude to certain works of fiction and non- discipline of medical humanities grasps the inventive fiction alongside certain journal articles and compilations expressions including music, painting and dance. They help in which talk about the integration of the two divergent overcoming a deficit in the discipline, widening the reasoning disciplines. The purpose of the review is to inspect the aptitudes and research capacities of the students in the clinical relationship of humanities with health and clinical practices. sciences (Dolan, 2015, p.1). He writes that the primary branch Medical Humanities, as a discipline, is for the most part, of Medical Humanities was set up in New York University in concerned about preparing clinical specialists with information 1948, however chronicled guidance in the Department of from various allied disciplines. It remains as opposed to Health Medicine at Johns Hopkins University had begun during the Humanities, which joins health and social care disciplines to 1930s. He opines that the discipline of medical humanities expressions of the social sciences and the humanities. Health should look past its mechanical perspectives to dig further into Humanities, then again, alludes to the use of the innovative the social conditions behind the ailment empowering expressions and expressive arts and the humanities disciplines, individuals to adapt to them. The motivation behind the for example, literary studies, philosophy, law and religion to incorporation of the clinical sciences with the humanities was talk about advancing human health and well-being. In the to give a more extensive foundational knowledge that was health humanities, health is comprehended dependent on the absent in regular clinical instruction up to that point. Dolan constructivist theory instead of the positivism of science. It puts further expresses that, bringing the humanities into clinical together its comprehension with respect to dialogical and training has for quite some time been viewed as assisting with different facts as opposed to the monolingual truth of scientific adjusting the rigors of rote retention and to provide inquiry. The health humanities do not look to set an option in commitment on the social milieu that impacts human services contrast to the medical sciences but however offers an even conveyance, patients’ convictions, and doctors’ emotional minded way to deal with health and its advancement, and can equanimity (Dolan, 2015, p.9). function in a way that is conducive for the health sciences. The medical humanities, then again can help clinical specialists with In spite of the fact that The Society of Health and Human Values viewing and tackling issues from more than one viewpoint as is started an exchange between the humanities and the medical the case with visual studies or the theater arts. In the field of sciences, and individuals from this gathering originally medical humanities, three critical terms stand apart which are distributed a book by Joanne Trautmann and Carol Pollard on investigated at length in the field of clinical practice. These are Literature and Medicine: An Annotated Bibliography in 1975. Bio-Ethics, Clinical Ethics and Literature and Medicine. Bio- Joanne Trautmann was additionally the primary supervisor of Journal of critical reviews 494 INTEGRATING HEALTH AND THE HUMANITIES CURRICULUM: A REVIEW OF LITERATURE ON MEDICAL HUMANITIES the journal Literature and Medicine which appeared in 1982. punishment by specific religions, for example, Christianity. The Society of Health and Human Values distributed another Cancer, then again, influenced individuals who needed collection in 1987 titled Literature and Medicine: A Claim for a enthusiasm and conviction; to individuals who stifled their Discipline, which discusses various socio-political occasions sentiments. She construes that, up until the twentieth century, which could most likely give a fruitful ground to the the two ailments were related with certain mental attributes of improvement of the discipline. The possibility of ‘innovatively’ the patients. She proposes that use of metaphors to portray an looking at parts of the human brain, rather than a minor clinical ailment will bring about an association with the repressed assessment was proposed by Dr Rita Charon, a doctor at passion and the illness in itself. She dissuades one from taking Columbia University. Following the strides of Joanne frequent recourse to metaphors in portraying illness (Sontag, Trautmann, she focused on the development of “narrative 2001). This assessment of hers prompted serious criticism medicine”, which had become another part of literature, from essayists who opined that utilizing metaphors helped looking at the relevance of literature to clinical practice. She patients to build up a symbolic language and this helped them paid customary visits to the Department of English, Columbia recuperate from their disease. E. J Cassel’s acclaimed article University to see how stories were developed. She even took up “The nature of suffering and the goals of medicine” expounds a course in English and eventually earned a Master’s Degree on the connection between suffering and organic illness. In and a Doctoral Degree in Literature. She had come to portraying a progression of patients who were enduring and understand the way that understanding the elements and the experiencing clinical treatment, he further underlines the exchange of the literary and the clinical