John Launer: Are medical humanities useful?

Several times a year I run sessions for GP training schemes or other groups of doctors covering arts topics outside their curriculum. These include the paintings of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo and the movies of the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. I badge these sessions as “medical humanities,” and there are indeed strong medical angles to both those figures. They each had complex medical histories, and some of their works reflected this. I also run sessions on creative writing, although again I slant these towards medical contexts, including accounts of patient consultations.Like most people who teach medical humanities, I’d be happy to talk about art, movies, literature, or writing with no medical angle at all. I feel obliged to hang these things on medical hooks mainly because it can add credibility to the subject for the group I’m teaching. Doing so can also engage learners who might otherwise consider the…
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