Prevalence of Medical Humanities Teaching in Medical Schools: Review of
Curricula in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom
Abstract
Rationale and Objectives Medical humanities are becoming increasingly
popular, required, and recognized as positively impacting medical
education and medical practice. However, the extent of medical
humanities teaching in medical schools is largely unknown. We aimed to
review medical school curricula in Canada, the UK, and the US. Our
secondary objective was to compare the inclusion of medical humanities
in the curricula with rankings of medical schools. Methods We searched
the curriculum websites of all accredited medical schools in Canada, the
UK, and the US to check which medical humanities topics were taught, and
whether they were mandatory or optional. We then noted rankings both by
Times Higher Education and U.S. News and World Report and calculated the
average rank. We formally explored whether there was an association
between average medical school ranking and medical humanities offerings
using Spearman’s correlation and inverse variance weighting
meta-analysis. Results We identified 18 accredited medical school
programmes in Canada, 41 in the UK, and 156 in the US. Of these, 9
(56%) in Canada, 34 (73%) in the UK and 124 (79%) in the US offered
at least one medical humanity that was not ethics. The most common
medical humanities were Unspecified Medical Humanities, History, and
Literature (Canada), Sociology and Social Medicine, Unspecified Medical
Humanities, and Art (UK), and Unspecified Medical Humanities,
Literature, and History (US). There was a negative relationship between
the ranking of the medical school and whether they offered medical
humanities. Conclusions The extent and content of medical humanities
offerings at accredited medical schools in Canada, the UK, and the US
varies. The quality of our analysis was limited by the data provided on
the Universities’ curriculum websites. Given the potential for medical
humanities to improve medical education and medical practice, this
variation should be investigated further.