The Medical Humanities Unit fosters collaborative learning, teaching and research across the humanities, arts, science and medicine.
Medical Humanities offers students the opportunity to explore crucial non-technical aspects of medicine and its intersection with experience and culture, in art, music, literature, history, sociology, anthropology, ethics and philosophy. Emphasis is placed on the creative arts in medical contexts, the human element in clinical experience, and the history of medical practice and culture.
The range of professional development outcomes from postgraduate study in Medical Humanities include enhanced professional skills in communication, clinical interaction and ethics; opportunities in non-clinical professional fields in health and medicine, including journalism, media and communications, policy development and deployment; teaching and mentoring positions; and a foundation for an academic pathway in Medical Humanities.
Originally located in the Faculty of Arts, the Unit is now based at the Centre for Values, Ethics and the Law in Medicine http://www.velim.med.usyd.edu.au/At the beginning of 2008, the administration of posgraduate coursework and research degrees in Medical Humanities was transferred to the Faculty of Medicine. Continuing and prospective students should contact the Medical Humanities Unit directly about their enrolments, subject choices and research options. We can then liaise with appropriate Faculty offices on your behalf. We also welcome involvement in the growing Medical Humanities community. If you have ideas about how you would like to get involved, or would like information about your organisation or event communicated to Medical Humanities alumni, students and other community members, please contact us. Our international "sister" centre is the Centre for the Arts and Humanities in Health & Medicine, located at the University of Durham in the UK. We also contribute the medical humanities component of the Graduate Medical Program. As well as the research carried out at VELiM, research projects in Medical Humanities include a study of work-life balance among recent medical graduates, the use of storyboards to capture indigenous children's experience of hospitalisation (Dr Meg Phelps, Children's Hospital Westmead) and the impact of poetry writing on patients with life-threatening illness.
| 
