Introduction

The Department of Medical Education aims to foster the practice of humanistic medicine, by teaching, and research into medicine, in the light of insights gained from the social sciences and the arts. Competence in the fields of ethics and communications are seen as core skills to be demonstrated by our graduates. The seamless integration of knowledge in the disciplines of psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, law, and philosophy, with knowledge of the life sciences and clinical medicine, is the approach that informs our interaction with faculty, students and research workers. The Department's educational efforts are directed to help medical students to become humane professionals primarily devoted to serving the welfare of their patients.

The Department was inaugurated at the same time as the founding of the Medical School, and has been chaired by scholars and practitioners from the fields of anthropology, sociology, psychiatry, internal medicine, and family medicine. The small group of core faculty are supported by a larger group of practitioners from all fields of clinical medicine and the social sciences.

Today, the Department stands at the center of the curricular reform in the Medical School's teaching program. Students experience exposure to clinical situations from the first year of their studies, and continue with this throughout the pre-clinical years. Intensive group-work accompanies the clinical experience where the students learn to derive the maximum educational benefit from their exposure to the world of practical medicine. In the first year the emphasis is on the transition from health to illness as seen from the patient's perspective. In the second year students accompany a family that has to care for a chronically disabled child or other relative; the emphasis is on the role of the caregiver. In the third year the students are attached to a personal clinical mentor and they see the practice of medicine from the viewpoint of the practitioner. During the three clinical years the emphasis is on specific skills such as bedside manners, breaking bad news, cross-cultural communications and solving clinical ethical dilemmas. Students are encouraged to independent study and they are assessed on the basis of seminar papers rather than examinations.

Members of the department pursue a number of different research interests, notably in the fields of doctor-patient communications, development of professionalism, anthropology, and chronobiology. There are active research seminars in the fields of bioethics and medicine, culture and society.