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Medical humanities in the US

Medical humanities in the US
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Now, we are going to focus upon the US professionalism. So… Beginning with the Flexor Report, the department of social medicine in a medical school is prevailing, which highlights the importance of a professional loyalty to the medical contract, especially to the people. However, with the rise of organized medicine, the mdicalization critiques really become a big challenge to the medical professionalism as well as medical society. So… Medical humanity could be seen as a reform within the medical society and later on, become a very important and new discipline, bioethics.
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Medical humanities set up a foundation for the development of the bioethics.
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Let me remind you the formation of medical humanities in the States. Until the 1950s and 60s, however, this was insufficient and consequently, the concept of America humanities began to flourish and the curriculum were implemented. More comprehensive arts and humanity and even ethics classes in addition to social Medicine classes. Gradually become in this dispensable part of medical professionalism training. In these classes, the history of medicine gradually became more important and turned out to be a a specialized field in medical schools. Also, regulatory medicine, clinical bioethics, and ELSI issues related to Genomic medicine were all on the rise.
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Degrees in medical humanities are primarily conferred through on-the-job training programs, while literature and art classes are offered through interdepartmental cooperation, and history of medicine classes are offered within medical schools. Medical schools have more autonomous capabilities in education and research related to bioethics; more universities, however have developed either cross-disciplinary bioethics or applied ethics centers, and others have advanced service learning curricula in conjunction with social medicine. So…
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We may see medical humanity in the States as an intellectual movement American intellectual movement on American medical humanities has created a new juncture in the collective development of the medical professional, which is sufficient to deal with recent complications in the doctor/patient relationship, ways of thinking about patient safety, development break throughs in genomic medicine, moral controversies generated by stem cell research, the digitization of patient medical histories and fully completing the management structures of medical information research ethics.
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These capabilities and their corresponding results are a learning environment for wide-ranging interdisciplinary exchange, use power-with approach to replace the ideology on de-medicalization power struggle, and instead promote cooperation in the preservation of patient autonomy, human rights and medical professionalism. Also, empathy that transcends existing social categories has become an important vehicle for medical professionalism’s adherence to the medical social contract in forming a new social identity.

The Flexner Report, also called Carnegie Foundation Bulletin Number Four, is a book-length study of medical education in the United States and Canada, written by Abraham Flexner and published in 1910.

When Flexner researched his report, many American medical schools were “proprietary”, namely small trade schools owned by one or more doctors, unaffiliated with a college or university, and run to make a profit. A degree was typically awarded after only two years of study. Laboratory work and dissection were not necessarily required. Many of the instructors were local doctors teaching part-time, whose own training left something to be desired. The regulation of the medical profession by state governments was minimal or nonexistent. The quality of medical education was jeopardized.

In this video, I will introduce briefly the development of medical humanities in the US. I will provide links of further readings as well. In the next video, I will introduce the development in Taiwan.

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This content is taken from Taipei Medical University online course
Medical Humanity: Engaging Patients and Communities in Healthcare
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