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Published on: February 16, 2011
Bearing Witness to Suffering and Social Justice: A Novel Multimodal Medical Humanities Course That Cultivates
Jessica C Babal1, Liana Eskola2, Elizabeth A Fleming3
1Department of Pediatrics, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, Madison, Wisconsin, babal@wisc.edu.
Background:
Racism, sexism, ableism, addiction stigma, weight stigma, and imbalanced power structures in medicine threaten human health and well-being. Medical humanities education that addresses positionality and power in clinical care may enhance physicians' abilities to provide compassionate care.
Methods:
Sixty medical students completed a medical humanities elective during the 2020-2021 through 2023-2024 academic years focus on suffering and social justice in medicine and completed pre- and post-course surveys.
Results:
Post-course surveys showed increases in students' self-assessed knowledge about applying medical humanities practices to provide compassionate patient care (P < .001), plans to use medical humanities practices in their future career (P < .001), and intent to disseminate or share their medical humanities work (P < .001).
Discussion:
This novel multimodal medical humanities curriculum exploring suffering and social justice fostered compassionate clinical care skills and intention to continually engage in humanities work.
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