Overview

The mission of the Health Humanities Certificate of Distinction is to educate and empower students and health care providers to value and employ humanistic approaches to patient care as informed by the disciplines of bioethics and medical humanism, narrative medicine, the arts and health humanities. The program promotes leadership, education, networking and advocacy to inspire and develop a cross-disciplinary and interprofessional community scholars, educators and learners.

Goals

  • Contribute to the College of Medicine’s core values of innovation in education, patient care, community outreach, research and servant leadership through development of humanistic competencies.
  • Develop a comfortable, authentic and genuine presence with patients.
  • Understand and engage in a covenant relationship with patients by being accountable and being present when present.
  • Sharpen medical students' skills in observation, description, reflection and communication to improve clinical care and relationships between physicians, patients, families and health care teams.
  • Explore and critically evaluate the range of human emotion and diversities in perception of the world as conveyed visually and figuratively.
  • Develop narrative competence through the ability to invite, reflect and act on patient values and stories.
  • Prepare medical students to practice wellness, self-care, reflection and resilience in preparation for future practice.