6th Permanent Seminar
Afonso Miguel Cavaco (University of Lisbon Faculty of Pharmacy)
Medical humanities in pharmaceutical sciences: a tangible reality?
Medical humanities and narrative medicine have an inescapable role in healthcare development. They are present in medical science and nursing education and research.
The pharmaceutical profession has always been connected to the process of caring, through the preperation of preventive medicine, and the relief or cure illness and, as such, reduce human suffering.
However, the pharmacist's role isn't always clear when ot comes to those who suffer. More concerned with technological advances for the production of more effective and safer medicine, or aprehensive with the commercial pressures from an ever mutating market, it seems the pharmaceutical profession has neglected the relevance of the unique intercation moments with those who are ill. Pharmacists are part of the prevention, relief or cure processes when delivering medicine and other solutions to combat illness. The path is paved towards personalized medicine, based on the individual's genetic profile. Unlike in other health professions, the medical humanities' role for compassion and altruism development is barely known, without which there are no professionals who provide true health care.
This presentation results from a brief search on the main sources for medical humanities, with the main goal of finding references to its interaction with pharmacies and pharmaceutical sciences.
Chaired by Teresa Casal
July 4th | 5 p.m. | Room 5.2, FLUL