Use of arts & humanities in pharmacy education to develop humanistic skills: A scoping review

Humanistic skills, including cultural humility and communication, are mandatory educational outcomes in pharmacy programs accredited by the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE). The arts and humanities foster humanistic skills' development, but their pedagogical use in pharmacy curricula is more recent than in medical education and lacks synthesis. Therefore, this scoping review aimed to map and characterize arts- and humanities-based pedagogical approaches used in pharmacy education to foster humanistic skill development.

Articles describing or evaluating arts- and/or humanities-based interventions in pharmacy education to foster humanistic skills were eligible for inclusion. We searched 9 databases and Google Scholar from inception to 11 December 2025. Search terms included pharmacy education, art, humanities, and narrative medicine. Extracted data included the types of arts- and humanities-based pedagogical approaches and the humanistic skills targeted by each intervention.

Forty-eight articles met the inclusion criteria. Reflective practice was the predominant pedagogical approach (48%), followed by literature-based learning (29%), theatre/drama (19%), and films/documentaries-based pedagogies (19%). Empathy (31%), perspective-taking (25%), cultural awareness/competence (23%), and communication skills (21%) were the most frequently targeted humanistic skills. In most studies, the authors reported development of one or more targeted humanistic skills.

Various arts- and humanities-based interventions show promising potential to support humanistic skill development; however, the evidence is largely based on student self-reports of these developments, limiting conclusions about the interventions' impact. Future research should use rigorous, comparable designs and examine how specific arts and humanities approaches map to specific humanistic outcomes to inform curricular design.