[Is there a place for humanistic dimension in medical education?]

Inspired by the concept of "two cultures", coined by C.P. Snow, this paper discusses the role of the humanities in relation to the natural sciences in a recently (since 1993) revised medical curriculum at the Faculty of Medicine in Trondheim, Norway. A concept of a "third culture" is identified as well: community medicine in a broad sense, disciplines dealing with health, illness and disease in the context of society and the environment. The implementation of the new curriculum was affected by intended and unintended social forces. The result was a hybrid model rather than the planned "pure" problem-based model. The humanities and "third culture" disciplines tended to yield to the pressure from the basic sciences when numbers of formal lectures were strictly limited, while the basic sciences themselves felt cut short by clinical disciplines. Problem-based learning in groups did seem efficient in basic sciences and clinical subjects, but not for the humanities or third culture disciplines. This apparent limitation in the problem-based approach was probably due to contextual factors, rather than inherent in the method itself.