July 17, 2014
Lewis Miller, HDO Marketing Coordinator

When it comes down to it, health care is fundamentally about dealing with people.

At its core, the field is built on relationships: doctor-patient; nurse-patient; doctor-nurse, nurse-aid, etc. These relationships are arguably as important as the reams of technical expertise and loads of mechanical prowess that are required to carry out procedures, treatments, and tests. If any one of these relationships breaks down, the level of care patients receive can suffer.

The humanities help us understand and relate to people – a crucial factor in building and maintaining relationships and, thus, in providing effective health care. An inability of medical practitioners to understand and relate to patients in modern health care is one of the primary issues the emerging interdisciplinary field of medical humanities is trying to address.

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