Teaching Medical Humanities in UK Medical Schools Network Report 22nd October 2025

Report by Richard Bellis (University of St Andrews) and Gina Hadley (University of Oxford)

Following our successful inaugural meeting in January 2025 and an online event the following April, we met again in Harris Manchester College, Oxford to continue to develop conversations on teaching medical humanities in UK medical schools. This event was kindly supported by the Uehiro Oxford Institute.

Where our first in-person meeting held a series of themed roundtable discussions that illuminated the broad set of challenges and opportunities that face humanities scholars in their roles at UK medical schools (the key findings from which have been published here), this meeting focused in on a key area of interest highlighted by our first meeting: medical education and research.

This focus fits with a broader goal identified by our network: to argue for the central role that humanities should have in modern medical education. In order to effectively make that case and to be able to persuade individual clinicians and institutions like the GMC, we recognise that we need to develop the body of medical education research that demonstrates the effectiveness that medical humanities pedagogy has in medical education. With this in mind, we invited speakers who could provide ‘how to’ knowledge that will help us advance a research agenda for medical humanities teaching in UK medical schools.

Our first speaker was Dr Susan Lamb (University of Ottawa) who presented on a session she has run with medical students in Canada called ‘History’s Toolbox’. The aim of the session is to improve students’ ability to handle socio-cultural complexity by giving them a ‘toolbox’ for handling it. This comprises 8 categories used in historical analysis that students are encouraged to apply to complex medical situations (social, cultural, economic, political, technological, intellectual, gendered, racial/ethnic). These categories are then used by students in the classroom through exercises that focus on identifying the presence of these different categories in historical events such as the Black Death (a full explanation of the method and its purpose can be found here, and a recording of the lecture is accessible below. Lamb acknowledged that might seem a little reductive to a room full of humanities scholars, but argued persuasively that for typically time-poor medical students this was a pragmatic way to provide them with a practical tool that can help deal socio-cultural complexity, as that complexity can be temporarily dismantled in order to provide clarity. Lamb likened her approach to histological stains: staining slides illuminates certain features of the slide at the expense of others still present, to see those features more clearly; the toolbox works in the same way by emphasising the socio-cultural issues present in a clinical encounter as a way of explaining them and dealing with them more effectively. If a patient is not taking their medication, being able to realise that there’s (e.g.) a technological reason for that (lack of computer/internet access) will go a long way to dealing with that issue effectively.

The first keynote lecture can be accessed here:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/wOg5Zm5XfMg

In discussion respondents noted that the approach makes the use of categories in historical analysis explicit to medical students, something that is typically implicit to historians. For humanities to be effective in medical education, this kind of approach is necessary. Doing so, makes humanities of practical use in medicine as the toolbox can be used like a checklist that can help to unpick complex situations. The opinion in the room was that this was an extremely useful approach that several were keen to try out in their own teaching.

Following lunch, we broke into two parallel sessions that focused on discussing short, interdisciplinary research papers with their authors. The focus of the session was to interrogate how medical humanities papers written by authors from humanities and clinical backgrounds can be facilitated by discussing the process with those who had successfully navigated it.

Session 2A focused on Iain Smith and Pam Lock’s paper ‘How did investigations into spontaneous human combustion influence alcohol medicine? An examination of the medical and literary discussions that brought the two together’, with Lock presenting the paper. Lock discussed how the process of writing the paper was facilitated in conversation over zoom, as the authors discussed the series of medical and literary texts about spontaneous human combustion they had identified together. Crucially, this was an iterative process between the two authors. Lock encouraged her clinician colleague not to defer to her on matters of close reading (effectively referring the work on) but to read closely together, enabling a broader range of insights from the same text than if the work had been split between both and treated separately. Here engagement with humanities methods by the clinical researcher was important to opening up a further range of possibilities for the research than achievable alone. Becky Im’s careful response to the paper also highlighted how engagement by scientific researchers with humanities research (she is an epidemiologist) can provide important context, motivation, and new ideas for scientific work.

Session 2B discussed Rhodri Hayward’s paper:‘Busman's Stomach 1937: Digestive Disorders and the Making of Modern Politics’ The paper was presented by Hayward. He explained how a new medical disorder came into being and gave a biological basis from which to argue the legal basis for improved conditions against the backdrop of 1930s Britain.

Gina Hadley provided a response from a clinical perspective that the condition was a physiological response based upon a primitive fear response as a direct reaction to change. Successful change management requires the reduction of fear (of the unknown) and a feeling of shared decision making to bring about change. In terms of teaching medical students, explaining and involving patients in conversations about their care is more likely to result in trust and compliance. The conversation culminated in how one could teach medical students ‘to be present’, to observe and notice and to listen to patients.

The second keynote of the day was delivered by Kay Leedham-Green, Imperial College London and editor of BMC Medical Education. Here a superb summary of ‘how to’ conduct good, useful educational research was prefaced by an important ‘polemic’. Leedham-Green’s target was the Medical Licensing Assessment, which is effectively the nationwide ‘final exam’ for many medical schools as passing it is a requirement to join the medical register. This comprises 200 multiple choice questions and a series of OCSEs (Objective Structured Clinical Examination – assessment of performance in a simulated clinical environment) focused on various clinical scenarios. The particular make up of the exam means that there is little or no scope to ask questions on areas central to modern practice such as the complex determinants of health, or to assess core skills like leadership rigorously. Moreover, some of the answers students are required to provide are not necessarily realistic in practice. These myriad specific flaws with the exam are important as passing the exam is what students focus their attention on – they have every incentive to do so – and so despite much emphasis on providing an education, instead, much medical education delivers training for the test in a positivistic manner that reduces the opportunities for genuine medical education. Leedham-Green sees the humanities as more than a corrective to this trend, but crucial for the necessary redesign of teaching approaches.

But to do so, we need more evidence. Leedham-Green provided a range of practical tips on various kinds of educational research too numerous to list here. The ultimate goal of medical education research is to create transferable knowledge. And such knowledge can motivate the transformation of medical education more broadly. To do so, it’s not necessary to master every research skill relevant to medical education research, but it is necessary to collaborate. Leedham-Green ended by encouraging us to involve clinicians, students, social scientists, and other humanities researchers in medical education research.

Our closing discussion drew themes from across the day. Alberto Giubilini (University of Oxford) considered how the different disciplines of medical humanities relate to one another, and how transferrable expertise in one area is to others, and how that may effect medical education. Does it undermine our credibility, or can this be addressed? Vanessa Heggie (University of Birmingham) underlined that by making humanities practically useful (such as via Lamb’s toolbox) we can sell it to medicine. There is value to clearly articulating the benefit we can provide and for that to fit within a constricted timetable. That benefit is rooted in humanities expertise but should be pragmatic too and useful to medicine. More broadly, it is of benefit to the field to have foundational papers and principles that medical humanities in medical education can adhere to, with Lamb’s paper one such example. Giskin Day (Imperial College London) discussed the management of ambiguity as a core rationale for medical humanities but argued that it’s often implicitly taught, rather than explicitly taught. Lamb’s paper is unashamedly utilitarian and explicit, with anchoring concepts like this being very useful. The other area humanities has provided insight into is that patients can be experts by experience. This is applicable to our roles as medical educators too – we become experts by experience in the classroom, and that is a valid role: to bring stimulus materials to the classroom and to enable conversations to bloom. With these comments and further comments and questions, including discussion of clinical teaching, the workshop drew to a close. The hosts encouraged anyone not who hasn’t already done so to join the mailing list TeachMedHums to keep the conversation going and hear about our future plans and events. Report by Richard Bellis (University of St Andrews) and Gina Hadley (University of Oxford).

Medical Humanities Hub, TORCH Research Hubs