What's medical humanities?
Medical humanities is where science and art meet. It's a set of ideas and theories that help us think through the whole human experience of medicine. This can include how doctors and patients communicate with each other, different cultures and traditions of health as well as how inequality can affect how we experience healthcare. Often people with backgrounds in subjects like history, ethics, geography or literature work alongside healthcare professionals to discuss these ideas.
How do we teach medical humanities to medical students?
In the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences we have been incorporating medical humanities into teaching for several years. In 2025 we won a prestigious Vice-Chancellor's Award for our teaching session "Diversity in Death and Dying", a session which removes students from hospitals and immerses them in the Ashmolean Museum, deploying cultural objects and images to help them discuss end-of-life care. Another session "Innovation" also uses historical artefacts, like patient records, to help students think through ideas about what medical progress actually is and how it changes experience of illness.
Expert Patient Tutors are a core part of our medical humanities team, teaching alongside medical and humanities educators. Another key session, "Storytelling", puts patient narratives at it's heart, encouraging students to think through the stories and experiences patients' bring to the consulting room.
We also work with students to explore professionalism, using the Advancing Medical Professionalism framework from the Royal College of Physicians. Forming a professional identity is a key part of training as a doctor. We encourage students to think through questions like what makes good leadership and how we formulate our professional character.
