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Abstract
In the wake of the Second World War there was a movement to counterbalance the apparently increasingly technical nature of medical education. These reforms sought a more holistic model of care and to put people – rather than diseases – back at the centre of medical practice and medical education. This article shows that students often drove the early stages of education reform. Their innovations focused on relationships between doctors and their communities, and often took the form of informal discussions about medical ethics and the social dimensions of primary care. Medical schools began to pursue ‘humanistic’ education more formally from the 1980s onwards, particularly within the context of general practice curricula and with a focus on individual doctor-patient relationships. Overall from the 1950s to the 1990s there was a broad shift in discussions of the human aspects of medical education: from interest in patient communities to individuals; from social concerns to personal characteristics; and from the relatively abstract to the measurable and instrumental. There was no clear shift from ‘less’ to ‘more’ humanistic education, but rather a shift in the perceived goals of integrating human aspects of medical education and who sought to do so. The human aspects of medicine show the importance of student activism in driving forward community and ethical medicine, and provide an important backdrop to the rise of ‘competencies’ within general undergraduate education.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 48-65 |
Number of pages | 18 |
Journal | Medical History |
Volume | 61 |
Issue number | 1 |
Early online date | 21 Dec 2016 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Jan 2017 |
Research Groups and Themes
- Centre for Humanities Health and Science
Keywords
- Medical education
- holism
- humanism
- patient-centred healthcare
- social medicine
- ethics
- general practice
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'Yesterday’s Doctors: The human aspects of medical education in Britain, 1957–93'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 1 Finished
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The Art of Medicine: The ¬タリHumanisation¬タル of Healthcare and Medical Education, 1910-1993
Bates, V. L. (Principal Investigator)
1/08/15 → 30/06/16
Project: Research
Profiles
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Dr Victoria L Bates
- Department of History (Historical Studies) - Associate Professor in Modern Medical History
Person: Academic