Number of Citations: 0

Submitted: 28 June 2022
Accepted: 16 August 2022
Published online: 3 January, TAPS 2023, 8(1), 54-56
https://doi.org/10.29060/TAPS.2023-8-1/CS2833

Ying Ying Koh^* & Caitlin Alsandria O’Hara^*

Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore

*Both authors contributed equally as first authors.

I. INTRODUCTION

Increasing attention has been given to the role of medical humanities in both clinical care as well as in medical education. Medical humanities is defined as an “interdisciplinary perspective that draws on both creative and intellectual methodological aspects of disciplines such as anthropology, art, bioethics, drama and film, history, literature, music, philosophy, psychology, and sociology” (Hoang et al., 2022). 

While 80% of health outcomes are related to the social determinants of health (Magnan, 2017), traditional medical education has largely focused on clinical knowledge and skills. Only in recent years have medical schools recognised the importance of medical humanities (Smydra et al., 2021). The strength of medical humanities is the ability to foster a more humanistic clinical practice and build professional social accountability (Pfeiffer et al., 2016). 

In Singapore, the Office of Medical Humanities was set up in the SingHealth Duke-NUS Academic Medical Centre to encourage the growth of the medical humanities in the local medical field (Ong & Anantham, 2019). This highlights the growing interest in medical humanities in Singapore. 

This paper aims to highlight an innovative approach for medical humanities education through student-led discussion groups, called ‘MedTalks’, conducted in the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, Singapore. 

II. A GROUND-UP APPROACH TO THE MEDICAL HUMANITIES

MedTalks was started as a student-led platform for medical students to gain exposure to the medical humanities social issues relating to healthcare. Through Socratic seminar-style discussion among students across all three medical schools in Singapore, MedTalks provides a safe space to learn from each others’ thoughts, and crystallise their own ideas and values. In the long term, MedTalks hopes to empower students to take actionable steps towards addressing the social determinants of health in their future clinical practice.

The initiative was inspired by a yearlong liberal arts non-degree programme in a liberal arts university in the United States which the two student-founders of MedTalks had experienced. This yearlong exposure to the liberal arts–particularly medical anthropology, medical history and political science–also informed the approach and development of the content of sessions. For specific sessions, experts or persons with lived experience were invited to be guest co-facilitators. While the liberal arts exposure provided a foundation, the facilitators themselves have made clear during sessions that  they are not subject matter experts, but students who are learning from fellow students through discussion.

III. FORMAT OF SESSIONS

MedTalks runs as a series of discussion sessions, which have three key features. Firstly, they are centred around a theme with accompanying pre-session reading materials for participants. These materials consist of excerpts from book abstracts, journal articles, and multimedia sources (e.g speeches, news sites or videos); these act as a primer on the topic and promote questions or ideas which can be raised in the discussions. Preliminary discussion questions are provided for students to ponder and reflect on prior to the session. Secondly, sessions are facilitated by the student-organisers of the programme. These student-organisers also curate the session themes and pre-reading materials prior to the session. Curation of session themes and materials is done based on themes encountered during clinical rotations, national current affairs, and suggestions from student-participants.  Thirdly, participants are not required to speak up during the session; they can choose to simply sit in for the discussion. The fact that sessions are student-led and verbal participation is non-obligatory facilitates a more comfortable environment for students in the discussion and allows them to participate in a way that suits their learning.

MedTalks discussions are varied in scope, with several broad subtypes as follows in Table 1: