The Fundamental Role of Arts and Humanities in Medical Education

Arts and humanities are essential to the human experience and their benefits to medical education go far beyond joys and pleasures.

By integrating arts and humanities throughout medical education, trainees and physicians can learn to be better observers and interpreters; and build empathy, communication and teamwork skills, and more.

The AAMC is committed to supporting the integration of arts and humanities.

Through the Fundamental Role of Arts and Humanities in Medical Education (FRAHME), we will provide resources to help medical educators start, develop, and/or improve the use of arts and humanities in their teaching. 

The bi-monthly AAMC FRAHME newsletter is for anyone interested in learning more about integrating arts and humanities into medical education.

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Our monograph, The Fundamental Role of the Arts and Humanities in Medical Education, provides an in-depth overview of the role arts and humanities play in educating a physician workforce to meet 21st-century health care needs, including enhancing the patient experience, improving population health, reducing costs, and promoting clinician well-being.

Download the report at the AAMC store

The Getting Started Guide is designed for educators who are new to incorporating arts and humanities into their programs, courses, or curricula. The Guide provides specific ideas and examples for integrating the arts and humanities into competency-based medical education as well as general guidance on logistics such as finding partners, selecting material and connecting with others.

Read the Getting Started Guide

The AAMC, the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine (SIDM), and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation awarded $5000 to four medical schools to host events where undergraduate medical students could present creative works related to their experiences with diagnosis, diagnostic error, or learning the diagnostic process.
 
On April 6, 2022 AAMC hosted a virtual forum with representatives from each of the awarded schools: Florida International University Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine, Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, Morehouse School of Medicine, and University of Toledo College of Medicine. They presented summaries of their events and selected work from medical student artists and writers.

Watch forum

In partnership with StoryCorps, The Good Listening Project, and the National Endowment for the Arts, the AAMC collected hundreds of contributions to our story sharing project. This project took place in 2020 and 2021 and offered a way for physicians, residents, and medical students to reflect on the uncertainty surrounding the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and racial injustice. Some prevailing themes of these contributions were disconnection, hope and gratitude, and grief and loss.

Healthcare professionals are welcome to contribute to this collection by interviewing colleagues about their experiences during the pandemic. We invite you to use StoryCorps Connect to help you interview others using a new remote technology. Sign in to our AAMC StoryCorps page, read the instructions and suggested interview questions, and record an interview that will be archived at the Library of Congress!

Browse collection

The AAMC commissioned a scoping review of arts and humanities in medical education that has resulted in three articles:

• How Are The Arts and Humanities Used in Medical Education?: Synthesis Results of a Scoping Review of Published Literature was published in Academic Medicine. This article provides a descriptive and statistical review of 769 publications about the arts and humanities in medical education.
• The Prism Model: Advancing a Theory of Practice for Arts and Humanities in Medical Education was published in Perspectives on Medical Education. This paper offers a theory of practice to support more strategic use of arts and humanities in medical education across all learning domains.
• The Prism Model for Integrating the Arts and Humanities Into Medical Education was published in Academic Medicine. This model guides educators in considering different approaches to teaching through the use of arts and/or humanities, depending on their objectives.

The AAMC has awarded eight $25,000 grants to U.S.-based member medical schools and teaching hospitals working on arts and humanities programs. These grantees will evaluate the impact of existing integrative arts and humanities programs or curricula across the continuum of medical education (undergraduate, graduate, continuing medical education). 

Read about the Awardees

In December 2020, the AAMC collaborated with the National Academics of Science, Engineering and Medicine to host a virtual event on the unique and valuable role the arts and humanities can play in medicine, medical education, and clinician wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic. The event featured a tapestry of activities and demonstrations that showcase current, integrative arts and humanities approaches to teaching and learning in medicine.

Watch the Recording

This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in publications and related programming or products do not necessarily represent those of these organizations.