Medical Humanities

The medical humanities explores the human side of medicine. Encompassing the myriad forms and areas where medicine intersects with the reflective and creative arts, medical humanities serves three important goals:

1. supporting academic research concerning medicine in the traditional litterae humaniores: philosophy and history, literature and art
2. encouraging the interaction of medicine and the creative arts, supporting physician novelists and painters, and projects in music and art therapy,
3. serving to create more compassionate, more communicative doctors, and lead to better health outcomes for patients.

Medical humanities is offered as a postgraduate program at various levels of intensity, from diplomas to Masters degrees, and may lead to higher research degrees. The degree structure is flexible and accommodates distance students, learning while working and part time study.

For medical students, taking Options in the medical humanities, like the ever-popular Medicine and Music, allows the exploration of the intangible but no less important social and cultural aspects of medicine.

For more information, please contact the Medical Humanities Co-ordinator, Dr Claire Hooker, at or visit www.usyd.edu.au/medicalhumanities.