Emotions at their rawest
By Dr Laila Abdel Aal Alghalban
What do Anton Chekhov ,John Keats, Robin Cook, William Carlos Williams, Yusuf Idris, Ahmed K. Tawfiq and so many similar icons have in common other than being literary heavyweights? The answer, which many people might not know, is that they are doctor writers. They are exclusively remembered for their literary creativity. The vibrant impact of their medical career on their writing grants them a great deal of vigorous human perspective. Their rich life which teems with real stories of patients and their families blesses them with so many moments loaded with emotional significance. No wonder then that physicians are generally deemed great storytellers. More interestingly, there has been a recent surge of interest in teaching literature as part of medical education curriculum. What is literature and how does it relate to medicine?
What is literature?
It is an extremely tough task to answer this question. Let me try furnishing a definition. Literature is roughly a body of oral and written works such as plays, poems and novels whose core message is to recreate our vast world with its chaos, ugliness and conflicts, and turn it into a more beautiful and compassionate one. Literature shines a spotlight on other people’s lives, struggles and big questions in places no one else has ever been to. It is a silky scalpel to unravel the secrets behind the predicaments with which humans wrestle, a glimpse into patients as much as illnesses, a healing power that purifies us and librates us from our shackles, and a time machine ribbing the fabric of place and time. Amid the chaos, uncertainties, and madness that sway us, literature and arts in general should be called on to have their say. They could send us a lifeline to create safer and more virtuous life options, unleash imagination and fight against all forms of negativity.
Literature and medicine
The close relationship between medicine and literature sounds so justifiably understandable. A look at the vocabulary used to talk about literature in the previous paragraph suggests the close affinities between literature and medicine. Spotlight, healing, power, fight, wrestle, purify, scalpel, among others, unearth the deeply-rooted shared area between them in our heads and hearts. Both literature and medicine heal. Both of them penetrate into human body and soul. Both of them help us lead a healthier and more beautiful life. Both of them touch our innermost, raw emotions. And both of them transform us to our better selves in case pressures build up and give us a bumpy ride.
A two-way street
Studies show that physician writers display more understanding to patients’ viewpoint and needs. Many physicians point out that writing helps them to reflect on what they practise, making it more meaningful and more humane. Medicine is a mine of special experiences and propelling stories that extinguish the flames of their literary call. Such moments and experiences get the best of physicians and ignite their creative writing potential. Intense fears, stress, pain, grief, tears running on cheeks, hugging, faces shining with hope and wishes, all blended together, get their most astonishingly primal, vocal feelings and thoughts out.
Medical humanities: What a synergy!
To build bridges with other sciences and professions that can feed positively in creating better medical education, a synergy of medicine, humanities, and arts has been recently gaining increasing momentum in many universities worldwide. It is called medical humanities. The discipline celebrates “the emotional component of the disease and allows a holistic approach with the additional consideration of social and situational factors,” according to a recent study. Art education would enhance medical students’ appreciation of the beauty of human body anatomy, nurture aesthetic sensitivity and eventually impact medical practitioners’ overall performance.
Nourishing ethics
The seismic changes in biology and genetics have raised mounting concerns on the morals of medical research and profession. Many questions have been left unsettled. For example, is it ethical to conduct genetic editing to unborn babies? Do genetic decoding procedures and laws sufficiently protect people’s privacy and data from being unlawfully and nonconsensually sent to biobanks? Another thorny issue is securing due respect to human body and life when it comes to such controversial issues as abortion, organ trafficking and euthanasia.
How it goes
In medical schools which have already included literature, humanities and arts in curriculum, students are asked to read the patients’ stories. Reading helps medical students to dive deeply into illnesses from the patients’ perspective: how they feel it, how they react to medication, how they assess physicians’ performance and how each patient can add to the doctors’ overall schema. In fact, reading patients’ journals or writings is a human and professional wealth to all staff cutting their teeth in medicine. Further, exposing to literature augments their understanding of the multidimensional political, cultural, social aspects of illness.
A long-awaited sigh of relief
It has become mandatory to strike a balance between offering excellent medical education and ensuring the values of love, devotion, empathy and care for the society in general. Our current life has become so materialistic and cruel like never before; people are racing to get the most of everything, and in so doing they get crushed. Medicine is touching everyone’s life, and therefore, humanising medicine would offer us a well-deserved and long-awaited sigh of relief.
Finally, life is much greater and more complicated for any science to address. In order to be qualified for the jobs of the future, soft skills, which arts and humanities nurture, are desperately needed. Let’s integrate arts and humanities into medical fields and build effective armory for a tough, unprecedentedly challenging future.
By Dr Laila Abdel Aal Alghalban Professor of linguistics Faculty of Arts Kafr el-sheikh University
Email: laila.elghalban@art.kfs.edu.eg
Source: Gazette Staff