University of Virginia Health System

Students in their fourth year are encouraged to round out their medical education at U.Va. with medical humanities study. Humanities study can help students (1) cultivate skills of reflective and critical thought; (2) explore the many dimensions and contexts of human experience; (3) reflect on values, traditions, ethical and spiritual concerns, and professional life; and (4) attend to their own formation as a professional. Skills acquired and refined through humanities study contribute to humanistic qualities and professional competencies that medical schools and residency programs routinely assess, including communication and narrative skills, compassion, self-reflection, professionalism, respect for others, cultural understanding, ethics, and understanding of medicine in society.

Humanities electives are offered throughout fourth year. Most are four-week courses. A student may take up to eight weeks total of humanities credit toward graduation. Courses are offered only if there is an enrollment of at least four students

U.Va.'s medical humanities electives address core competencies as follows:

Narrative Medicine and Professionalism
Literature and Medicine
Images of Medicine in Film, Literature, and Visual Arts
Interprofessional Seminars in Ethics & Professional Life

Reflection and Spirituality
Religious Traditions and Medicine
Mindful Practice/Mindful Life
Suffering, Medicine, and Faith

Cultural Competence
Culture and Medicine
Elementary Medical Spanish - Language & Culture
Intermediate Medical Spanish - Language & Culture

Medicine and Society
History of Medicine
Public Health in Fiction and Film
Ethics, Society, and Human Biology

All competencies
Independent Research in Humanities

For detailed descriptions, see
http://www.med-ed.virginia.edu/handbook/electives/humanities/index.cfm

or http://www.med-ed.virginia.edu/handbook/electives/humanities/index.cfm

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HUMANITIES ELECTIVES
2008-2009

Rotation 4:  23 June-19 July 2008 (drop by 26 May)

• Elementary Medical Spanish - Language and Culture (3520), directed by Rafael Triana, taught by Beatriz Cortabarria. Offers introductory-level intensive instruction in basic medically related Spanish and looks at cultural issues relevant to the care of Spanish-speaking patients. No prior knowledge of Spanish required. This section of the course is also open to second-year medical students and clinical faculty.

Rotation 7: 15 September-11 October 2008 (drop by 18 Aug)

• Elementary Medical Spanish - Language and Culture (3520), directed by Rafael Triana, taught by Beatriz Cortabarria. Offers introductory-level intensive instruction in basic medically related Spanish and looks at cultural issues relevant to the care of Spanish-speaking patients. No prior knowledge of Spanish required.

• Religious Traditions and Medicine (3501), directed by James Childress, with faculty of the Department of Religious Studies and School of Medicine. Examines the world's major religious traditions' views of and responses to the body, health, illness, suffering, and death, and, through case studies, explores relationships between religious understandings and ethical practice of medicine.

Rotation 9:  10-22 November and 1-13 December 2008 (drop by 13 Oct)

• Mindful Practice, Mindful Life (3522 - two weeks only, 18-22 Nov and 1-5 Dec), directed by Julie Connelly. Explores mindfulness as a practice helpful both to the physician's clinical work and personal well-being.
• Culture and Medicine (3507), directed by Gertrude Fraser. Focuses the anthropologist's lens on Western biomedicine as a cultural system, on the learning and practice of medicine, and on health disparities in the U.S. due to gender, race, and class..

Rotation 10: 5-31 January 2009 (drop by 1 Dec)  

• Literature and Medicine (3503), directed by Marcia Day Childress. Examines fiction and nonfiction, poetry, drama, and film having to do with doctors, patients, illness, and life in medicine, with emphasis on physician writers and the issues that interest them, and attention to narrative practices common to both literature and medicine.
• Public Health in Literature and Film (3517), directed by Ruth Gaare Bernheim, with other faculty. Explores public health and health policy issues through the cultural lenses of literature and popular cinema.

Rotation 11:  2-28 February 2009 (drop by 5 Jan)

• Images of Medicine in Film, Literature, and the Visual Arts (3508), directed by Hunter Groninger. Explores images and conceptions of physicians and the patients they see, and looks also at the diverse social and cultural contexts in which medicine is practiced.
• Medical Spanish - Language and Culture (3515), directed by Rafael Triana, taught by Beatriz Cortabarria. Offers intermediate-level intensive instruction in medically related Spanish and examines cultural issues in the care of Spanish-speaking patients. Prior study and knowledge of Spanish required.

Rotation 12:  2-28 March 2009 (drop by 2 Feb)

• History of Medicine (3506), directed by Luke DeMaitre. Explores the history of medicine through study of landmark texts, changing understandings of the body and certain diseases, and the evolution of medical institutions.

By arrangement in any Rotation, 1 through 13:

• Research in Humanities (3509, up to 8 weeks), directed by Marcia Day Childress, Julie Connelly, Daniel Becker, and other faculty. Independent research and writing or creative arts projects on a topic in the humanities or related to the human and socio- or biocultural dimensions of health or illness. Proposal must be approved at least one month in advance of project start date.
• Ethics, Society, and Human Biology (3521, 2 to 8 weeks), directed by James Childress. Independent projects on issues of medicine, ethics, and society pursued within the university-wide Institute for Practical Ethics & Public Life, especially in conjunction with the Institute's interdisciplinary projects.
• Suffering, Medicine, and Faith (3514), directed by Margaret Mohrmann. Explores patients' and physicians' spiritual beliefs and practices as these influence understandings of the body, health, illness, suffering, death, and medical practice.

By arrangement, throughout the year

• Interprofessional Seminar in Ethical Values & Professional Life (3518, sections A, B, and C; one week), directed by Marcia Day Childress and Ruth Gaare Bernheim. Each seminar enrolls a mix of students from Medicine and Law, Medicine and Graduate Arts & Sciences, or Medicine, Law, and Darden. Readings from literature spark consideration of moral and ethical dimensions of professional life. Each seminar is taught by a pair of faculty from Medicine, Law, Darden, or Arts & Sciences and meets five evenings through the academic year. This elective runs concurrently with other electives.