Discovering Consensus: A Focus Group Study of Health Humanities Education

Area of Science:

• Health Humanities Education
• Academic Program Development
• Interdisciplinary Studies

Background:

• Significant growth in North American health humanities programs over two decades.
• Existing variation in program structures and educational content.
• Need to define distinguishing features and essential components of health humanities education.

Purpose of the Study:

• Solicit perspectives from health humanities educators on program distinctiveness.
• Identify essential knowledge, skills, and values for high-quality health humanities programs.
• Distill defining parameters for academic health humanities programs.

Main Methods:

• Employed Participatory Action Research (PAR) methodology.
• Conducted 14 focus group interviews with 89 self-identified North American health humanities educators.
• Utilized thematic analysis across seven domains, identifying 41 themes and five overarching themes.

Main Results:

• Identified seven domains: Knowledge, Education/Pedagogy, Methodologic Approaches, Skills, Values, Disciplinarity, and Institutional Limitations/External Restrictions.
• Discovered five cross-domain themes: Interdisciplinarity, Internal Inquiry, External Examination, Praxis, and Transformative Education.
• Found consensus on field-level priorities despite programmatic variations and lack of canonical knowledge bases.

Conclusions:

• Overarching themes indicate shared priorities in health humanities education.
• Consensus on key elements transcends programmatic diversity.
• Further research needed for improved assessment and evaluation tools for health humanities programs.