Ian Fussell

Community Sub Dean UEMS

In 2002, The Peninsula Medical School (now Peninsular College of Medicine and Dentistry (PCMD)) became the first UK medical school to integrate the medical humanities as core curriculum.

Every year since, year four students engage in a six-month project alongside and mentored by an artist. The culmination of the project is a conference organised by the students displaying and presenting their work.

The work thus created has become increasingly sophisticated over the years, as evidenced by the 2016 conference that just took place in Truro (April 2016). In fact, it was probably the highest quality of work seen to date and would not be out of place at any international medical humanities conference.

The morning session was opened by Professor Alan Bleakly, the current President of the Association for Medical Humanities and a leading world expert in the field. This was a particularly poignant conference as 2016 is the final year that it will be run under the auspices of PCMD following the disaggregation of Exeter and Plymouth Medical Schools. It may have been this, or the unsettled future that the current students are facing, that gave this year’s presentations an extra edge.

Following a superb talk by Alan that encouraged a political voice, we were treated to three songs written and performed by “Dull to Percussion”, a band formed in the “Medical School of Rock” module. The songs were indeed political, satirising the split between the universities and included a protest song aimed squarely at our Health Secretary. Search iTunes or Spotify to listen for yourself, and watch “A Song for a Hunt” go viral.

The day was then jam-packed and it was impossible to experience all that was on offer. The range of skill and talent was breathtaking. We were lectured on the human cost of the western desire for sweetness by students from the anthropology module, and invited to debate “Do Christians make better doctors” by the Christian ethics students. This year a number of new Special Study Units (SSUs) were run. They were also extremely good and included a collaboration with Truro’s Hall for Cornwall team.

The students worked at the theatre, but more impressively wrote a play on mental health in medical students. We were treated to a premiere performance – “Permission to be Human” should be performed at every medical school in the country. There was also a monologue by a shy mature student who helped us understand alcoholism and PTSD in war veterans. The mood was lifted by a hilarious stand up routine; how can dislocating your shoulder be so funny?!

There were a number of writing modules, including poetry. The audience was encouraged to write poems in a short workshop. Another new module was “Writing the Knife”, which generated superb short reflections on memorable clinical incidents. One piece called “Quayside” was outstanding and deservedly won a prize. Read it here https://memorablemedicmoments.wordpress.com/author/memorablemedicmoments/ and add your comments.

There was so much more to the students’ work, and this short piece cannot cover everything. However, I do want to mention a some other excellent pieces: working with clay exploring the professional masks doctors wear; pottery boxes representing the mess that doctors get into as they progress through their careers; moving and uncomfortable films that depicted a child’s journey through a hospital; the doctors strike shown as a frightening political movement; dopamine photography; a project on how we smell; and life drawing in conjunction with Falmouth Art School. At the end of the day we were “kettled” into a small room, and forced to party…

The aim of this SSU is to develop student’s tolerance to ambiguity. But the SSU achieves much more than this: it helps students develop a community of practice; it also fosters development of resilience and peer support; and importantly, the students have fun while exploring other perspectives on life and illness. I am extremely proud of our medical students and feel very privileged to work with them in this way. I hope that both Exeter and Plymouth continue with medical humanities in their developing curricula.