Medical Education: arts, humanities and science

Abstract

The Chilean Academy of Medicine highlights the need to explicitly integrate the arts and humanities into medical education. Medicine, historically centered on the care of the sick person, has evolved toward an increasingly scientific and technological practice. While this shift has produced undeniable advances in research, diagnosis and therapy, it has also contributed to a profound change in the physician–patient relationship. This phenomenon manifests in impersonal consultations, fragmentation of care, diminished empathy, and the erosion of ethical commitment and professional well-being.

This paper underscores the importance of integrating medical humanities into medical education with approaches such as person-centered medicine, narrative medicine, bioethics, and professionalism. These perspectives emphasize that patients are persons, with values, beliefs, and unique experiences that must be acknowledged in clinical care. It further stresses that the capacity for empathy and humane treatment is essentially acquired through the example of clinical tutors who embody these principles in daily practice.

Medical humanities –philosophy, history, literature, arts, and social sciences– are presented as essential dimensions of medical training. They broaden the understanding of patients, illness and suffering while counteracting the risks of depersonalization. The Academy therefore calls for a cultural shift in medical schools that ensures their curricular integration, formal and complete academic recognition, and the development of committed clinical tutors. Only by aligning scientific rigor with humanistic education will it be possible to attain this change in teaching and health institutions to form physicians whith scientific and technical competences but also empathetic, ethical, and culturally aware.