Lloyd Rucker, MD, and Johanna Shapiro, PhD
For more than 30 years, the humanities have been represented in the curricula of major U.S. medical schools. In fact, in a recent six-year period, the proportion of schools with humanities course content rose from one third to three fourths. Although student and faculty responses to medical humanities are generally positive, our understanding of what the humanities can contribute to medical education and how their presence in the curriculum affects learners is still insufficient.