Medical Humanities
Our teaching programme “Medical Humanities” offers a complimentary perspective on medical practice and medicine in general: that of the social sciences and humanities. After all, ‘medicine’ is not just a bundle of facts and clinical skills, but also a complex space for human interaction. Consequently, doctors are required to fill many different roles; communicators, managers, medical experts, scientists and pastoral companions, to name just a few. Fulfilling these various roles, codified to a certain extent by both the Swiss Lernzielkatalog (SLCO) and the CanMeds Roles Frameworks, can be extremely demanding. One must be flexible, self-critical and have a profound understanding of how the action space “medicine” works and how it has developed.
Despite not really lending itself to memorisation, this kind of knowledge is no less important to the practice of medicine than clinical knowledge. We aim to help our students overcome these challenges through our courses on medical ethics, economics, history and law as well as sociology, anthropology and the linguistic dimensions of medicine.
For example, our students engage in reflective writing. In their essays, they describe experiences of illness from both the perspective of the patient and the doctor; they show how deeply divergent illness is perceived in both parts and how much flexibility is required for a well-working doctor-patient-communication.
Our lectures and interactive seminars form a part of all three years of the BA-course. They are well structured and and build on each other. You can download a detailed programme by clicking the green button bellow.
