A study of acceptability & feasibility of integrating humanities based study modules in undergraduate curriculum

In clinical practice doctors are required to understand patient's emotional and psychological needs while applying scientific knowledge and skills to the patients1. Learning medical humanities will help medical students and doctors to understand patient's emotional and psychological needs. With the help of art and literature, medical students and doctors can further develop their observational skills, analytical reasoning and power of imagination2. The traditional training of medical students gives very little emphasis on this important aspect. The importance of teaching medical humanities has not been realized yet3. Its integration in undergraduate curriculum still faces criticism as consensus is still required to be developed regarding the content of curriculum, process of teaching and its assessment4,5. Though there is no agreed definition of medical humanities, the General Medical Council of United Kingdom defines medical humanities as an international endeavour that draws on creative and intellectual strengths of diverse disciplines, including literature, art, creative writing, drama, film, music, philosophy, ethical decision making, anthropology and history in pursuit of medical educational goals6. Humanities related courses have already been integrated in the undergraduate curriculum in various forms in many medical schools of Europe, USA and Australia.7 It is yet to be developed and introduced in India that has around 310 medical schools with a yearly intake of more than 36,000 students in undergraduate courses8. With worldwide experience, where introduction of humanities based study modules have improved students knowledge, attitudes towards patients and self-directed learning9, we undertook this study to develop, introduce and evaluate the acceptability of medical humanities based study module in our undergraduate (UG) teaching curriculum. The study was designed around three core objectives. First, to develop humanities based study module (HSM) as an educational instrument in UG curriculum; second, to introduce the module as a part of bedside learning experience to the undergraduate medical students attending rotatory clinical posting in a medical college in north India, third, to study the acceptability of study module on the basis of students’ feedback.