Good medicine is more than a set of technical decisions and interventions involving drugs, operations or tests. It demands more of the practitioner – professionalism, empathetic care, moral consideration, insight, an understanding of human suffering and necessarily, wisdom. These attributes are not always prioritised in selecting for or training healthcare professionals, and there is little time or attention given to their authentic development within busy working environments. Further, there is a widening hiatus of trust, understanding and expectation between medicine and society around what constitutes good medicine. This pressingly requires real engagement around medicine’s role and society’s values. A purely scientific answer will never prove sufficient here.

Medicine Unboxed is a unique project and conference programme that engages both the public and front-line NHS staff with a view of medicine that is infused and elaborated by the humanities. Contributors include artists, writers, the clergy, poets, philosophers, lawyers, linguists, musicians, theatre, ethicists, academics and doctors. The results are thought-provoking, inspiring, sometimes funny and often
moving.

Our theme this year is Medicine and Values.

We think of medicine as simply fact-based, efficient and scientifically robust. These arbiters can become the measures of good medicine. However, medicine is infused with judgments of value – individually for doctors and patients but also in medical science, for society, for policy-makers and health economists. Ethics, law and religion inform duties and rights in medicine, through principles and values. The values that define good medicine are not always apparent or agreed upon and there remains the potential for tension between them.

We’d like to invite you to come along to Medicine Unboxed 2011 and join us in uncovering the values that pertain to medical care and debating the ambivalences around the arbiters of good medicine. Our speakers this year include the Rev. John Bell, John Carey, Lionel Shriver, Jo Shapcott, Ray Tallis, Paul Bailey, Michael
Arditti and Havi Carel.

Come to the debate – be inspired.

Sam Guglani, Consultant Clinical Oncologist.

http://medicineunboxed.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=040c885489432f9ea79fbd23b&id=f00835b9f4&e=1767bdcee5

This second international interdisciplinary conference* aims explore the past, present, and possible future of comics in the context of the healthcare experience.  Programs in medical humanities have long touted the benefits of reading literature and studying visual art in the medical setting, but the use of comics in healthcare practice and education is relatively new.  The melding of text and image has much to offer all members of the healthcare team, including patients and families.  As such, a subgenre of graphic narrative known as graphic medicine is emerging as a field of interest to both scholars and creators of comics. more…

This is a small, participative, interdisciplinary conference for users, professionals and academics organised by Think About Health, a network committed to doing collaborative ‘intellectual plumbing’ in the NHS.  Key note speakers include Femi Oyebode (poet and psychiatrist) and David Fuller (emeritus professor of English).  Other contributions from Angus Clarke (clinical geneticist), Deb Lee (paediatrician), Martyn Evans (professor of medical humanities).

It will explore the different languages, clinical, technical, managerial, political, colloquial and other, that flow around the NHS, and their effects and implications for health care and those who plan, offer and receive it. more…

Cheltenham’s ‘Medicine Unboxed’ is a series of conferences for NHS staff, exploring a view of medicine that aspires to more than the technical and which necessarily refers to values, uncertainty and human understanding – to art as much as science. This year, in partnership with the Times Cheltenham Literature Festival, we engage the interface between medicine, language and stories. more…

On the 8th and 9th of July 2010 the Faculty of Health and Social Care at London South Bank University will be hosting a pioneering conference focusing on Best Practices in Clinical Ethics Consultation and Decision Making. For the first time in the UK, this conference will bring together an international and inter-professional dialogue between different stakeholders with the aim of fostering and developing best practice in clinical ethics consultation and decision-making across all sectors of healthcare. more…

The Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry, one of the UK’s newer medical schools, has got a lot of things going for it, including its location in the glorious west country. A fact that won’t escape the notice of those lucky enough to be attending the  annual conference of the Association of Medical Humanities this July. Given the many attractions of the two sites for the conference- Truro and Penzance- it’s a wonder that delegates will manage to drag themselves  from the delights of coastal scenery and local hospitality and into the lecture hall. more…

Although the first comic book was invented in 1837 the long-format graphic narrative has only become a distinct and unique body of literary work relatively recently. Thanks in part to the growing Medical Humanities movement, many medical schools now encourage the reading of literature and the study of art to gain insights into the human condition.

A serious content for comics is not new but representation of illness in graphic novels is an increasing trend. The melding of text and visuals in graphic fiction and non-fiction has much to offer medical professionals, students and, indeed, patients. Among the growing number of graphic novels, a sub-genre exploring the patients’ and the carers’ experiences of illness or disability has emerged. more…

This one day conference is the brainchild of Dr Sam Guglani, a clinical oncologist who specialises in the treatment of patients with breast, lung and brain cancers. You might think this would be enough to keep him busy, but working with people at such a vulnerable and formative time in their lives has clearly left him wondering how to best understand and encapsulate all the things his patients have taught him and that so rarely appear in medical textbooks and research papers. more…

Coming up soon, the organisers of this conference, ‘Thinking about Health’, promise a different kind of conference: small, participative, interdisciplinary, and aimed at users, professionals and academics. It will explore the changing nature of roles and relationships in the NHS and their implications, focussing on the implications of change for the integrity and identity of individuals, professions and organisations.

The conference aims to address questions like does integrity mean anything in the contemporary NHS; is the nature of integrity, individual and corporate, changing; and how can integrity be exemplified and encouraged by policy makers, professionals and users?

Alongside plenary presentations, there will be structured, small group discussions and short contributions by practitioners and users to ensure discussion is earthed in the everyday life of the NHS. A final plenary will draw together the issues discussed, with a panel of leaders from academic disciplines and health care professions.

This is the third event organised by Think About Health. For more about the network see www.thinkabouthealth.org

To join Think About Health or to learn more about the conference contact J Calinas: jcalinas@thinkabouthealth.org

So here’s the thing. No matter how interesting (or otherwise) medical school deans and research grant making bodies  find the work done by medical humanities scholars and educators, the bottom line is (almost) always, what’s in it for patients? How will teaching students using art and literature make them better doctors; how will the insights offered by historians, anthropologists, philosophers etc help ensure that patients get better, more affordable, more appropriate care? Why, in other words, given all the other calls on my time and resources, should I support you and your work rather than focussing on biomedical research? more…