Concluding Commentary. The Importance of the Humanities in Medical Education: Where are we now?

Abstract

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The undergraduate medical curriculum, together with many of the other healthcare curricula, is under a constant state of change. Sometimes that change is for the better, very occasionally less so. Many physicians who graduated more than forty years ago may agree that the humanities were a strong component of the hidden curriculum; the humanities were just there and enhanced many teaching activities (mainly lectures) to a variable state. They were used by a certain proportion of faculty to make their lectures “more exciting”, “more real” and “to put them in context”. Over time and as new teaching and learning technologies took the place of formal teaching (such as lectures), these humanities approaches and enhancements appeared to become less prominent.

This new AMEE MedEdPublish theme - The Importance of the Humanities in Medical Education - has not only demonstrated that the humanities are not gone and lost forever, they were just hidden, but the number of papers received demonstrated that the subject is certainly healthier than expected and suggests the inclusion of the Humanities within all forms of healthcare curricula and training opportunities.

This concluding commentary provides an overview of the large number of papers received, explores the various reasons that support the presence of the humanities in the curriculum, provides insight into the ways that the humanities are being taught and finally, provides some direction of the way forward.