| Medicine and medical education have changed drastically in the twentieth century. One recent response to these changes was to introduce humanities and human values programs into the medical curricula. This curricular reform was seen as a way to broaden the perspectives of medical students, and as a way to counterbalance the technological emphasis of modern medicine.;Although highly touted by leaders in the field of medical humanities, and supported in various ways by most medical schools in the United States, there have been few studies which have examined the effect of humanities study on medical students--none from a phenomenological viewpoint. Concurrently, instructors and administrators of these humanities programs have implied that study of the humanities can impact students in five areas: behavior, skill, knowledge, attitude, and perspective. The author believed it was important, in addition, to determine the meaning a humanities learning experience had for students. This new information would provide a complementary data base to those instructor-generated assumed effects.;In order to derive data based on the personal meaning system of the students, the researcher used techniques from the field of anthropology. The theories that underlie the research approach used were those of grounded theory formulated by Glaser and Strauss (1967) and symbolic interactionism recently forwarded by Blumer (1969). The analysis of the data relied heavily upon the developmental research sequence of Spradley (1979).;The cultural scene analyzed in this study was a humanities program at a midwestern college of medicine. Senior medical students enrolled in an intensive month-long humanities course were informants for this study.;The researcher, during his six weeks of field work, came to realize that students sensed they were involved in an interwoven series of experiences. This mind-set was the meaning system through which the students organized their behavior and interpreted this learning experience. This month was viewed as a break, a chance to escape from clinical responsibilities. But the month was also seen as a chance to integrate, refocus, or learn new information or skills that related to a different type of responsibility--a human responsibility. |
