| The single largest divide in academia is centered between humanistic and scientific disciplines. The separation of these two disciplinary ideologies stems from centuries of stereotypical assumptions about both modes of interpreting reality. For example Albert Levi confidently states In The Humanities Today that " (I) f those in the science and those in the humanities ... misunderstand one another, ... this is hardly surprising ... they think differently ... (and) speak two separate languages"(56). Thomas Kuhn argues that when universities teach science as a "linear," left-brain only process, they misrepresent how the practice of science actually works. One group of students particularly vulnerable to the effects of polarizing humanistic and scientific ways of knowing are medical students, since until the early 1980s, the majority of medical schools exclusively relied on the sciences to teach medical students how to be effective practitioners. In the last ten years, however, a group of scholars known as medical humanists have begun to work against medical students' narrowly focused schooling by exposing them to literature and writing, two rarely required activities in medical school. In targeting their efforts toward humanizing the field of medicine, medical humanists are filling a gap in academia since few current interdisciplinary programs link the science and the humanities. This dissertation is a qualitative ethnographic study of one medical humanities program located at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Medical School (UMKC). It centers on two questions: (1) In this medical humanities interdisciplinary environment, what instances are there when medical students exhibit thoughts/behavior/ideas not considered during other stages of their medical training? and (2) What instances are there when medical students exhibit traditional, academic or science-based behaviors in this non-traditional, humanities-based educational environment? In its concluding chapters, this study demonstrates that although medical students primarily utilized traditional science-based learning tools during this particular medical humanities experience (e.g., they recorded 'facts,' resisted abstract descriptions, and tuned-out 'irrelevant' (e.g., personal) stories), they did begin to conceptualize themselves as active participators in the world of medicine by recognizing that there is an interpretive level to doctor/patient interactions. In summary, because these medical students had "to read in the fullest sense," and learn how to " (tolerate) ambiguity" during this medical humanities experience, they had to begin realistically preparing for actual "doctor/patient encounters" (Trautmann 32). |
