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Curriculum

Educational Objectives

This degree program provides advanced training and practice in the biopsychosocial approach to understanding health and illness.  Through the study and application of humanities to issues in patient care, students will:

  • Acquire knowledge of concepts, methods and subject materials from core humanities disciplines (literature, ethics, history, and visual arts) in relation to current problems and issues in healthcare.
  • Consider multiple perspectives from humanities disciplines on ‘caring for the patient’, with particular focus on the patient and provider as persons in social and cultural contexts that shape their knowledge, behaviors and attitudes.
  • Develop skills and tools from humanities-based knowledge about patients, providers, and practices that can be applied in clinical practice, studied in scholarly research, and taught in healthcare education.

Career Relevance

For all students at various stages of their careers, the program offers an interdisciplinary, interprofessional learning environment that brings together learners from humanities and healthcare fields to share knowledge and expertise, to think critically and collaboratively about issues in healthcare, and create potential networking opportunities and possibilities for future collaborations.

For students from healthcare disciplines, this program will strengthen and deepen their knowledge, skills and behaviors that can be applied to their own clinical practice and developed through their careers.  Learners in the program will be able to serve as teachers; they will have the foundational training to educate their colleagues and, as their careers progress, their students.

For students from humanities and other non-healthcare disciplines, this program extends their scholarly focus from within a discipline across disciplines to the study of healthcare issues and practice.  Students in this program will learn about healthcare through formal coursework, and also directly from their classmates who are training or practicing in diverse healthcare fields.  The coursework and mixed interdisciplinary peer learning and clinical practicum will provide students with personal and professional knowledge of some aspects of clinical care that will be valuable for possible careers in medical education or healthcare.