Creighton faculty members Brooke Kowalke, PhD, Matthew Reznicek, PhD, and James Smith Jr., MD, presented “Good Readers and Good Doctors: Literature in Medical Education” as a panel discussion at the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities annual meeting on Oct. 15. The presentation described their experiences with the incorporation of medical humanities into the educational curriculum at the School of Medicine.
Smith, professor in the Departments of Medical Education and Medical Humanities, discussed the emerging recognition of the potential importance of arts and humanities in medical education, and how Creighton University School of Medicine is incorporating arts and humanities into its four-year curriculum on both its Omaha and Phoenix campuses.
Reznicek, associate professor in the Departments of English and Medical Humanities, and Kowalke, an assistant professor in the Departments of English and Medical Humanities, discussed how the study of literature, as a foundational humanities field, can enhance the medical, social and humanistic values espoused in the precepts of cura personalis.
Reznicek specifically addressed his experience with medical students in the pre-clerkship years in his course, Death, Health and Dickens. Kowalke then described the development and evaluation of her fourth-year medical student elective, Bearing Witness: Memoirs of dying, Death, and Grief.
The panel discussed the evolution of medical humanities at Creighton University, including the organization of a Department of Medical Humanities at the School of Medicine, and the development and initiation of a graduate program in medical humanities leading to a Master of Arts. Kowalke, Reznicek and Smith have been involved in the development and initiation of a medical humanities component of the medical school curriculum for about three years, through collaboration with and support from the Kingfisher Institute for Liberal Arts and the Professions, the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Medicine.
