Carnal knowledge [excerpt] by Dannie Abse.
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Cadaver↗
Biomedical subjects
Deborah Kirklin
Publications and source records attributed to Deborah Kirklin.
Responding to the implications of the genetics revolution for the education and training of doctors: a medical humanities approach.
BACKGROUND: Rapid advances in the field of genetics continue to present medical educators with significant challenges. Whilst there is undoubtedly a pressing need to educate doctors about genetic disorders, research and therapies, there is a parallel need to provide a context for all of these. CONTENT: An interdisciplinary, arts and humanities based approach, responding to this need, is described. This teaching has been successfully delivered both as optional and core undergraduate teaching, and as part of continuing professional development. THE HUMAN PERSPECTIVE: STORIES NOT HISTORIES: Understanding of the patient's perspective can be significantly improved by drawing on both written and oral stories of illness. THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: LEARNING FROM THE PATIENT: Experiential learning provides insights into the social history of developments in genetics, thereby placing the current concern and debate about the new genetics in context. THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA: THE POWER TO PERSUADE: Critical reading skills can be developed and the power of the popular press to influence the reader acknowledged by analysing and employing the skills of the journalist when reporting developments in biotechnology. LEARNER ASSESSMENT AND EVALUATION: Assessment, both formative and summative, demonstrates sophisticated insights and perspectives into the lived experience of genetic illness. Learner evaluation of the teaching is high. CONCLUSION: Medical humanities offers a powerful way to convey an understanding of how genetic disorders impact on the lives of patients and families, and to set this against the background of a history rich in the uses, and abuses, of knowledge of heredity.
Clinical Competence↗
The Centre for Medical Humanities, Royal Free and University College Medical School, London, England.
The Centre for Medical Humanities is based within the Royal Free and University College Medical School. With a student body of more than 2,000, this large United Kingdom medical school benefits from being a fully integrated component of University College London. With its strong humanities and science faculties, University College London was founded more than 175 years ago to make education available to wider social and religious groups. With this background, it is logistically and ideologically well suited to sustaining a medical humanities program. The Centre's aims are to raise awareness of the field of medical humanities, to develop resources for the academic and teaching communities, and to build a broad and well-grounded educational program supported by sound educational principles and innovative research. Since 1998, the Centre and its predecessor, the Medical Humanities Unit, which was established by a group of medical educators with a diverse range of interests in the arts and humanities, has built interdisciplinary links and collaborative relationships with individuals and institutions within the university and beyond, nationally and internationally. These links and relationships have provided invaluable contributions and stimulus to the Centre's activities. The undergraduate educational program described in this article includes core and optional teaching throughout the curriculum, and a 1-year intercalated Bachelor of Science in Medical Humanities degree. For postgraduates, the Centre offers the United Kingdom's first continuing professional development accredited 2-day course in medical humanities, and an annual residential retreat open only to graduates of the course.
Curriculum↗