The term of ‘medical humanities’ includes pure humanities (literature including poetry, prose and narrative, linguistics, folk arts, philosophy, ethics, history, and religious studies), social sciences (sociology, anthropology, demography, cultural studies, psychology, health geography, politics, economics, law, gender studies, communication and information) and arts (performing arts including theatre, films, music, dance and soap opera, music, visual arts including painting, photography). Despite the word ‘humanities’, the medical humanities include social sciences and arts beside humanistic science

I firmly believe that all the disciplines you mention are warranted for physicians likely to objectify people. Keep them in touch with their human side.

Have you read Blease's recent defence of medical humanities?

Blease C. In defence of utility: the medical humanities and medical education. Med Humanit 2016;42:103–108.

The argument is that medical humanities help students to acquire analytical skills and useful intrinsic thinking pathways.

Thanks, Dr James

May I also add, it may help prevent the kind of unethical culture in medicine of the 1950s and 1960s in the West, rarely but occasionally written about, exposed by Dr Maurice Pappworth in his 1967 book Human Guinea Pigs, which he compared to Nazi scientific experimentation. Doctors were subsequently forced to adhere to the Nuremberg code.

I believe inclusion of these medical humanities will prevent doctors from being dissociated from their societies and will give rise to human-doctors.

Please read this interesting article:

http://mh.bmj.com/content/26/1/23

Thanks a lot Dr Sarra. I found the article so interresting