(The Hedgehog Review) – During the last fifty years, the field of medical humanities—particularly the subfields of bioethics, narrative medicine, and social justice—has tried to help doctors deal with some of these issues. But the new environment in which doctors work is so radically different from what it was a few decades ago that the field as now conceived has little to offer them. Worse, medical humanities veered off course during this same period, focusing on patients more than doctors, and making it even less relevant to doctors’ professional lives.

Doctors need a medical humanities that does more than just help them see health and disease through a patient’s eyes. They need one that helps them look into their own minds, that gives them models of order and clarity with which to understand their own thought processes, and that helps them maintain their own equilibrium when dealing with bosses and bureaucracies. (Read More)