Literature is filled with examples of all sorts of doctors: Dr. Jekyll, Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Faustus, Dr. Zhivago, even Dr. Dolittle.
And it turns out that reading those books — and the study of humanities in general — can be instructive for real doctors, too. At least that’s the kind of the thinking behind a new program being pitched at the University of Utah.
Two professors at the U. are pushing for the school to launch a bachelor’s degree called “medical humanities,” where students who want to go to into the medical field will study the classics of writing, the arts, philosophy and ethics — all with the intention of making them better, more holistic health care providers.
“If you think of health care as humans giving care to humans, you need to think of the humans in that equation,” said Gretchen Case, the director of the U.’s longstanding Center for Health Ethics, Arts, and Humanities, as she pitched the new program to the school’s Academic Senate earlier this month.
The health and ethics center has existed at the state’s flagship institution with various name changes but a singular mission since 1989. It is focused on bringing insights from the humanities and arts into the medical world of science, an intersection that Case sees as natural and beneficial, teaching healers to act with compassion, according to the center’s mission statement.
The U. already has a minor in medical humanities; it also is currently the only traditional public university in the state with an associated medical school. Now, Case said, she would like to see the program expanded into a full degree for students to major in to train the next generation of doctors.
Softer skills, like close reading, analyzing a text, listening, asking questions, connecting with people, she said, are often developed in the humanities classroom. And they go a long way in building a foundation for health professionals, along with the science they learn in chemistry or biology, when working with patients with complex illnesses.
That includes telling someone they have a life-changing diagnosis, studying a patient’s symptoms, thinking creatively about how to treat an illness and generally communicating with kindness. Essentially, viewing an X-ray uses the same skills as interpreting art.
A degree would include classes on bioethics (the ethics of medicine and biological research), studies on human nature, examinations into bias and a look into art. This year, for example, Case taught a class titled “Art in Medicine/Medicine in Art,” and one of her students created artwork on a physician’s white coat.
Sydney Cheek-O’Donnell, a theater professor, has also worked on a research project using theatrical techniques to improve nonverbal communication with health care patients.
The hope would be to start the program in fall 2025, as a collaboration between the Department of Philosophy and College of Humanities. It passed unanimously in the Academic Senate, though it will still require final approval from both the U.’s board of trustees and the greater Utah System of Higher Education.
It comes at a difficult time for higher education in Utah, with schools tasked by state lawmakers to make cuts to “inefficient” programs. There are fears that that means the liberal arts will be targeted for elimination; expanding with a new major now is a risk.
But Jim Tabery, the other professor overseeing the new degree, said there is demand for it in Utah, which doesn’t have any school offering degrees in this field while roughly 130 universities nationwide do, mostly on the East Coast. That includes medical humanities programs at Harvard University, the University of Chicago, Brown University, Rice University, Northeastern University and more.
“The Intermountain West is a desert in this field,” Tabery said. But across the country, “these degrees are going up exponentially in the last 10 to 20 years.”
He also sees it as a narrative against cutting the liberal arts, showing that those studies have an important place in all careers — including in the high-demand medical field. And it’s a way to make a degree that is interdisciplinary and collaborative across several departments.
(University of Utah Health) Pictured is former student Joni Aoki holding a white physician's coat she painted in the art and medicine class taught by Gretchen Case, right.
In his job, Tabery is the perfect example of someone with a career that crosses both fields, working in both the Department of Philosophy and the Department of Internal Medicine. He examines the debate around genetics, including the use of DNA results in the criminal justice system and who has been harmed by genetic research.
Tabery believes the new degree would help give students an edge in applying to medical school, particularly if they pair it with a traditional science degree. “It makes for an extremely attractive candidate,” he said about admissions.
Case, who has sat on the admissions committee for the U.’s medical school, said the people who review applications are “absolutely” looking for humanities degrees and see those as a positive. Those studies show the committee, she said, that students can think and adapt, be empathetic and work well with people.
At some point, she said, the arts and humanities were divorced from the clinical and science skills necessary to be a doctor. But she says that was a detriment. And in the 1970s, researchers in the U.S. started trying to bring them back together with medical humanities programs.
Katharine Coles, one of the members of the U.’s Academic Senate and a renowned poet, said she has sent poetry students to medical school who have done exceptionally well and made for caring doctors. There is no reason doctors can’t have heart and love good literature; they should be warm and welcoming.
“This is great,” Coles said during the discussion. “I’m delighted that you’re doing it.”
Currently, the program has received dozens of letters of support from faculty willing to teach classes, Tabery said.
He also noted the degree applies to students who don’t want to be doctors necessarily, but who want to work in the medical field as communicators, journalists, researchers or maybe the next novelist to create a famous doctor character.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Languages & Communication building at the University of Utah is pictured on Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2024.
