Medical/Health Humanities: Critical analysis of theoretical and practical foundations of medicine

Monajemi, Alireza; Namazi, Hamidreza

doi:10.30465/ps.2021.34161.1488

Medical/Health Humanities: Critical analysis of theoretical and practical foundations of medicine

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Alireza Monajemi ¹

Hamidreza Namazi ²

¹ Philosophy of science &amp; Technology Department IHCS

² Medical Ethics dep TUMS

https://doi.org/10.30465/ps.2021.34161.1488

Abstract

"Medical humanities" seems to be a paradoxical phrase primarily. How these two distinct and separate fileds of knowledge have been linked is due to the problematic state of medicine. In the first part of the article, we will analyze medical humanities based on the controversies in this field, and in the second part, the critical meta-medical studies will be proposed as an alternative to medical humanities.
To answer the first question, we have used the controversies studies.
The contemporary trend of medical humanities began with the critique of modern medicine in the late sixties and early seventies, which was concerned with the growing development of biomedical sciences and dehumanization of medicine. The pioneers in this field found a solution that could be linking the humanities to the field of medicine. The medical humanities has established by reforming the curricula of many medical schools , and gradually expanded to clinical research and clinical practice.
A careful review and analysis of medical humanities literature identified five main issues in surface layer: broad and different conceptions and definitions, discipline vs. field, multidisciplinary vs. interdisciplinary, medical humanities vs. health humanities, classical humanities vs. critical humanities and medical humanities vs. medical philosophy.
In the final analysis in the deep layer, two elements can be distinguished: one is dichotomies and the other is drives or processes. Dichotomies can be classified into several general groups: methodological (instrumental-critical and concrete-integrated), epustemological (natural sciences-humanities, specialist-commoners), ontological (human-human sciences, art-science) and praxiological (health vs. clinical, care vs. cure). In the case of drives or processes, we can mention medicaliztion, bureaucratization, technicalization, ethicization, scientificization, specialization, individualization. But as we mentioned in the final analysis, both approaches has suffered from serious limitations.
In the second part of the article, two questions will be addressed: What is the defensible critical approach in medical / health sciences and what are the proposed critical meta-medical studies as an alternative to medical / health sciences? Modern medicine and humanities and social sciences have the same origins, and therefore sociology, psychology, etc., as medical humanities, cannot humanize medicine. Hence, a critical theory should be considered that critiques both social sciences and medicine at the same time; Like Foucault, Gadamer and Habermas.
Critical meta-medical studies, such as the cross-disciplinary umbrella, pay attention to the fundamental questions of medicine and, of course, inforce the discipline to a critical appraoch, both among themselves and towards the goal of medicine.

Keywords

Medical humanities

Controversies studies

medical philosophy

the theory of disciplines integration

Interdisciplinarity

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