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A culturally competent approach to teaching humanities in an international medical school: potential frameworks and lessons learned

Daher-Nashif, Suhad; Kane, Tanya

Authors

Tanya Kane



Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Feb 3, 2022
Online Publication Date May 11, 2022
Deposit Date May 26, 2023
Journal MedEdPublish
Print ISSN 2312-7996
Publisher Taylor and Francis
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 12
Pages 6
DOI https://doi.org/10.12688/mep.18938.2
Additional Information Referee status: Indexed; Referee Report: 10.21956/mep.20295.r31554, Jeni Harden, Usher Institute, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK, 17 Feb 2022, version 1, indexed; Referee Comment: Suhad Daher-Nashif;
Posted: 23 Apr 2022; Thank you very much for your valuable comments. We also believe that the process, the frameworks and the structure can be a helpful example to build similar courses, especially in colleges with multicultural backgrounds and students of different nationalities.  Regarding the remaining sessions, these sessions comprise interactive guest lectures delivered by physicians who are passionate about specific art forms, a visit to a gallery exhibit on a medical or health-related theme, and a field trip to Sidra Medicine to view art within a medical context.
For example, in Spring 2021 course, Dr Amir Taj al-Sir, an accomplished Sudanese physician, novelist, and poet based in Qatar was invited to talk about his experience as a doctor and novelist, and the relationship between writing and doctoring. He discussed his novel Ebola 76 and its relation to the COVID-19 pandemic and more. In previous years, students have attended visiting art installations such as the Iraqi plastic surgeon, painter and sculptor, Dr Ala Bashir internationally recognized for his portrayals of the human condition. At the end of the semester, we attend a tour of Sidra hospital to view Damien Hirst’s “Miraculous Journey” and other local, regional and international art works displayed within the hospital setting. Initial course feedback suggests that the course has fostered contemplation of these issues. For example, a second-year female said, “The course helped me to know what the patient might think of what I have just said, and how to read the patient through his facial expressions and body language.” A third year male contends, “I learned how to pay attention to details and indirect messages in art works, which I believe will help me in seeing more details when I look at real patients. It is weird to say that, but I think every patient is like an art work that I need to analyze and understand in order to give the best care.” A second year female asserts, “This is the only place where I can discuss real life issues such as women and poor people’s suffering, with no self-restriction.” Students engaged with the intersectionality spontaneously, even without directing them to do so. Talking about their own experiences, and linking these experiences to their sociocultural and political determinants, created the relevance and meaning of the course’s content and themes. In the future, in addition to students’ feedback, we plan to use SPICES and FAIR models, as tools to evaluate and improve the course. We will add these examples of sessions, and students’ feedback, and evaluation tools in the revised version.; Referee Report: 10.21956/mep.20295.r31706, P Ravi Shankar, IMU Center for Education, International Medical University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 31 Mar 2022, version 1, indexed; Referee Comment: Suhad Daher-Nashif;
Posted: 23 Apr 2022; Thank you very much for your valuable comments and reflections from your own experience in building similar courses. As you mentioned and based on our experience, the main challenge was to find nonwestern resources and artifacts for the course. Having one instructor (SDN) who have a rich knowledge related to nonwestern art works helped in reaching the artifacts. Hence, the divergent backgrounds of the two faculty members involved in the course proved to be one of its strongest assets as each brought a different lens to the material and approaches. We believe that it is beneficial to include several instructors from different cultural backgrounds in structuring and delivering medical humanities courses. This can optimize the breadth of representation of ethic-racial content material covered. Culturally-diverse medical student populations deserve to examine contributions of art and humanities derived from marginalized and underrepresented groups to ensure inclusivity and holism.  Inviting several instructors, engaging and collaborating with local physician-artists can also be a solution in contexts that lack financial resources to fund such courses. In addition, we can see the impact of the English language dominance in nonwestern medical schools, especially when it comes to the students’ interaction with non-English speaking patients/families. Nevertheless, in medical humanities course we can also witness the benefit of thinking and reflecting in the non-native language, as liberating from existing cognitive structures. We don’t have evidence for that yet, but we could see creativity that we could not see in other venues in the college. Furthermore, we found it easier for students to talk about sensitive or taboo issues in strange language, because it sounds more formal when compared to using the mother tongue to express the same issues.; Grant Information: The author(s) declared that no grants were involved in supporting this work; Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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