Lecture by Cecília Leão (Escola de Medicina, Universidade do Minho)

Humanities in medical training: The medicine of caring for the whole which is much more than healing and treatment

Today's and tomorrow's personalized medicine is a dichotomous medicine, on one hand it seats with scientific evidence, with method and with illness, but on the other it seats with a medicine centered on the Person and on its Narrative, its global experience, its personality. Chronologically, the anthropological paradigm was the founder of "western" medicine - expressed in the "Hippocratic Oath" -, which prevailed until the end of World War II. Afterwards... the patient, as a Person, started fading from medical practice. The biomedical or biomechanic model began being valued in the teaching and practice of medicine, to the detriment of training based on more holistic, antrhopological ou biopsychossocial concepts of the ill person, which has only been resumed in the last few decades. This is the medicine of caring for the whole which is much more than healing and treatment. It is this medicine that Medical Schools must look to prepare their students for. There is no magical recipe, but what might largely contribute towards it is the formal introduction of the humanities in medicine courses' curricula, in such a way that it integrates and articulates with the remaining biomedical and clinical subjects, offering opportunities to explore the intersection of artes and humanities with clinical practice. The ultimate goal is the graduation of excellent Doctors who excell at Knowledge and How To with the best of what science and biomedical knowledge has to offer, but who are also capable of delivering it to Others - the Person who expects them and asks for their help -, with the internalization of attitudes and values of Knowing How To Be.

Chaired by Isabel Fernandes

February 6th | 5p.m. | Sala de Actos | FLUL