Literature in medical teaching: The crucial importance of literature in the education of medical students

Authors

  • Josep Eladi Baños Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona, Spain).
  • Elena Guardiola Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona, Spain).

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7203/metode.8.10555

Keywords:

medicine, literature, medical teaching, dehumanisation, humanities

Abstract

Recent years have seen an increase in the interest for the use of literature in the medical context with different objectives. First of all, its use as a pedagogical tool for medicine students made it possible to improve necessary professional competencies that were difficult to achieve with traditional biologist education. Secondly, patients’ accounts have become very interesting to understand how they live their disease. Finally, the usefulness of literary works as an enhancing tool in order to improve the quality of life of patients is starting to be recognised. In conclusion, literature constitutes an element with great formative interest that can improve the relationship with patients because it allows a better understanding of their disease.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biographies

Josep Eladi Baños, Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona, Spain).

PhD in Medicine and Full Professor of Pharmacology of the Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona, Spain).

Elena Guardiola, Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona, Spain).

PhD in Medicine. Department of Experimental and Health Sciences of the Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona, Spain).

References

Baños, J. E. (2003). El valor de la literatura en la formación de los estudiantes de medicina. Educación Médica, 6(2), 93–99. doi: 10.4321/s1575-18132003000200005

Baños, J. E., & Guardiola E. (2015). Utilidad de los textos literarios en la docencia de ciencias de la salud: Ejemplos en cardiología. FEM: Revista de la Fundación Educación Médica, 18(1), 5–14. doi: 10.4321/S2014-98322015000100003

Baños, J. E., & Guardiola, E. (2016). ¿Leer a Tolstói nos hace mejores médicos? Reflexiones en torno a La muerte de Iván Illich. Revista de Medicina y Cine, 12(3), 170–176.

Berthoud, D., & Elderkin, S. (2017). Manual de remedios literarios. Cómo curarnos con libros. Madrid/Barcelona: Siruela/Círculo de Lectores.

Craice de Benedetto, M. A., Gatti, G., & Lima da Costa, D. (2011). La literatura como recurso didáctico en la formación humanista de los estudiantes de medicina. Atención Familiar, 18(3), 59–62. 

Fitzgerald, F. (2015). Medicine: The greatest of humanities. Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, 49(5), 964–966. doi: 10.1016/j.jpainsymman.2014.12.014

Guardiola, E., & Baños, J. E. (2016). «Del médico que no sabe más que medicina…» o la publicación de artículos no médicos en revistas médicas. Revista de Medicina y Cine, 12(4), 193–195.

Hawkins, A. H., & McEntyre, M. D. (2000). Introduction. Teaching literature and medicine: A retrospective and a rationale. En A. H. Hawkins, & M. D. McEntyre (Eds.), Teaching literature and medicine (pp. 1–25). New York: The Modern Language Association. 

Hidalgo, A., & Cantabrana, B. (2017). Efectos terapéuticos de la lectura. Revista de Medicina y Cine, 13(2), 75–88.

Hunter, K. M., Charon, R., & Coulehan, J. L. (1995). The study of the literature in medical education. Academic Medicine, 70(9), 787–794.

Kohan, S. A. (2013). La escritura terapéutica. Claves para escribir la vida y la creación literaria. Barcelona: Alba editorial.

Miller, E., Balmer, D., Hermann, N., Graham, G., & Charon, R. (2014). Sounding narrative medicine: Studying students’ professional identity development at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Academic Medicine, 89(2), 335–342.

Nadal, J. (2017). Libroterapia. Leer es vida. Barcelona: Plataforma editorial.

Navarro, F. A. (1999). Viaje al corazón de uno mismo. ¿Por qué demonios escriben tanto los médicos? Madrid: Roche. 

Shapiro, J. (2011). Illness narratives: Reliability, authenticity and the empathic witness. Medical Humanities, 37, 68–72. doi: 10.1136/jmh.2011.007328

Squier, H. A. (2000). Teaching humanities in the undergraduate medical curriculum. In T. Greenhalgh, & B. Hurwitz (Eds.), Narrative based medicine(pp. 128–139). Londres: BMJ Books.

The Lancet (2015). Literature and medicine: Why do we care? The Lancet, 385(9963), 90. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(15)60004-6

Young, R. K. (2016). Introducing The Arts and Medicine. JAMA turns another page. JAMA, 316(13), 1365. doi: 10.1001/jama.2016.14822

Downloads

Additional Files

Published

2018-06-05

How to Cite

Baños, J. E., & Guardiola, E. (2018). Literature in medical teaching: The crucial importance of literature in the education of medical students. Metode Science Studies Journal, (8), 215–221. https://doi.org/10.7203/metode.8.10555
Metrics
Views/Downloads
  • Abstract
    2065
  • (Español)
    3
  • PDF
    892

Issue

Making science: A multitude of perspectives (2018)

Section

Narrating health. Literature and medicine

License

All the documents in the OJS platform are open access and property of their respective authors.

Authors publishing in the journal agree to the following terms:

  1. Authors keep the rights and guarantee Metode Science Studies Journal the right to be the first publication of the document, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of authorship and publication in the journal.
  2. Authors are allowed and encouraged to spread their work through electronic means using personal or institutional websites (institutional open archives, personal websites or professional and academic networks profiles) once the text has been published.

Metrics