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Photo: John P. Lofreddo, USF - Health Sciences Photography |
Beginning this month, students at the University of South Florida (USF) in Tampa will be offered an interdisciplinary graduate degree program in bioethics and medical humanities, the first in Florida to provide equal focus on two complementary disciplines.
Lois LaCivita Nixon, Ph.D., M.Litt., M.P.H., professor of medical ethics and humanities at USF College of Medicine, is the coordinator and one of the originators of the new program. She describes it as a strong community resource for improving understanding of complex issues facing individuals, families, and society.
"Even in an age of biotechnology, medicine is above all a human endeavor involving stories about people who are frail, aging, sick, or dying," Dr. Nixon says. Everyone is a story comprised of twisting narrative threads. How we follow those threads depends on the tools and lens we're using. It is this reality that defines the human condition."
The program is comprised of rigorous core courses and a wide array of elective choices including principles of bioethics, the history of medicine, research ethics, fiction, and art, and can be completed full-time in 18 months to two years. It is open to students with bachelor's degrees in liberal arts as well as those with backgrounds in business and health sciences. Several courses will be available online beginning in January 2004, and an intense, week-long certificate program is planned for next summer.
Faculty will be drawn from several colleges across USF, including Medicine, Nursing, and Public Health, Arts and Sciences, and Visual and Performing Arts. "It is this solid connection with other disciplines across campus that makes the program a rich 'university' experience rather than one with a narrower college focus," Dr. Nixon says. "The depth of our interdisciplinary effort is what makes the program vital and unique."
The program begins with Introduction to Bioethics and Humanities, a course that is required for all first-year medical students. This year, first-year medical students will be joined by 10 to 15 non-medical students from the community: civic leaders, practicing physicians and nurses, corporate officers, legislative leaders, and others wanting to gain more knowledge about difficult issues associated with bioethical dilemmas.
Dr. Nixon says the program is founded on the premise that questions posed by increasingly complex healthcare problems can be addressed only in part by information in the medical text, physicians, and other healthcare workers.
"If we want to broaden informed decision-making and improve public policy relating the thorny issues of modern medicine and technology, insights [can be] drawn from a broad mix of disciplines ranging from medicine to philosophy, religion, anthropology, and current film," she says. "These provide another kind of lens, and another interpretive approach for seekers of medical knowledge, skills, and tools."
Students may learn about alcoholism, mental health, and dying in physiology classes, but their understanding of the complexities and consequences associated with each of these can be made more concrete by examining various forms of art, Dr. Nixon says
These could include addiction, as portrayed in Eugene O'Neill's "A Long Day's Journey Into Night," the effects of depression as presented in last year's film "The Hours," or by the dynamics of dying in Margaret Edson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play "Wit," which follows a poetry scholar's hospital experiences after she is diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer.
Students also will consider writings by physician-authors such as Anton Chekhov, William Carlos Williams, Perri Klass, John Stone, Richard Selzer, Abrahma Verghese, Kate Scannell, and Atul Gawande, who bring observational skills and clinical interpretation to the lives and emotions of patients, families, and increasingly, themselves. The physician-writer often tells stories about others but also reveals his or her own personal feelings, Dr. Nixon says.
She credits USF medical school dean Robert M. Daugherty, M.D., Ph.D., with "changing the landscape" by forging new connections with the community through his support of the new program. More than 100 applications were submitted in June, when the program was first announced, she says.
"Dr. Nixon and her team have pulled together distinguished faculty from across campus for a program that crosses traditional boundaries," Dr. Daugherty says. "These very serious, very interested students will be inspired and instructed by materials we offer and the challenges our various communities face."
By Michael G. Malloy
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