The
Center for Medical Humanities & Ethics welcomes Dr.
Ruth Berggren, Interim Director. Berggren joined the faculty
at the Health Science Center as an associate professor
of medicine in 2006. She is assuming leadership from Dr.
Abraham Verghese, who has just taken a position at Stanford
University
The Center offers an ambitious curriculum of literature,
drama and the visual arts to integrate the humanities
into medical education. It uses a formalized, three-pronged
strategy emphasizing a clinically focused curriculum,
service-based learning and bedside teaching to help students
fulfill their highest potential as physicians.
"The humanities are vital in helping students maintain
empathy with their patients," Verghese says. "Students
come to medicine with a great capacity to imagine the suffering
of others. In their clinical years, however, they are taught
to take the patient's unique story of illness and translate
it into the depersonalized language of the chart. We want
to keep alive their innate humanity, integrity and empathy."
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