Literature and medicine

The New York Times published a compelling article today about the growing use of literature courses in medical school and residency programs. The courses are intended to help physicians grow and foster empathy for patients. And there is growing research that the programs work.

You can find the article here:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/health/chen10-23.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

And the comments here: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/combining-literature-and-medicine/

One of the most compelling comments was that these courses are indeed valuable, but they should be taught by literature professors, not medical doctors. But some of the doctors who commented on the article disagreed, saying it was more important to emphasis the relevance to the patient narrative rather than literary technique. Like the literature professor, I have sometimes wondered about the fact that M.D.s rather than communication professors teach medical students communication skills. It is not just that literature professors or communication professors hold specialized knowledge about their topic, which they certainly do. It is about the fact that professors from outside the medical field bring a new perspective and push medical students to get beyond thinking like doctors and get them to think as members of the human community. Senior physicians can certainly guide young physicians in how to pull all they have learned together in the patient setting. It seems that if we want a doctor that is technically astute and also expressive and empathetic, there has to be many teachers and many different kinds of textbooks to make that happen.