Episode 104: Why the Humanities Matter in Medicine

Transcript for Episode 104: Why the Humanities Matter in Medicine

• [0:00:07] BT: Students envisioning a medical career might picture long lab hours, clinical rotations, and scrubs. But preparing to make a difference in healthcare includes more than technical training.

  [0:00:18] BHA: That's where a liberal arts education can be surprisingly impactful. I'm Becca Haupt Aldridge, and on this episode of College Admissions Insider, we're exploring how liberal arts schools like Bucknell give aspiring medical practitioners a holistic view of health.

  [0:00:30] BT: I'm Brooke Thames, also from Bucknell. We'll chat about what that looks like in the classroom, where the liberal arts and technical training intersect, and the long-term career benefits.

  [0:00:39] BHA: Joining us is Jennifer Thompson, an associate professor of history and an influential faculty member in Bucknell's own Health Humanities Program. Welcome to the podcast.

  [0:00:47] JT: Thank you for having me. It's a real pleasure to be here.

  [0:00:50] BT: Yeah, thanks so much for joining us to chat about this really interesting approach to health education and health careers broadly. Before we jump in, can you give us a rundown of your faculty role here at Bucknell and any particular areas of academic interest?

  [0:01:04] JT: Yeah. So thank you. I am, as Becca said, an associate professor in the history department. I'm starting my 14th year here at Bucknell. My PhD training is in the history of science. Here at Bucknell, I teach broadly in 20th-century U.S. history with a particular focus and passion for the history of medicine in the United States in the 20th century.

  [0:01:26] BHA: You are one of several faculty that lead one of Bucknell's newest programs, Health Humanities. Can you dissect the term a little bit more for those of our listeners who may not have heard of something like that before?

  [0:01:35] JT: Yeah, that's an excellent question. I will just say before I answer that question, there's excitingly about 13 of us who are actually involved in the Health Humanities Program. And we can probably get into that a little bit in the interview in terms of who's in the room and who's representing their disciplines.

  But yeah, if we think about the health humanities, it might be really helpful just to start with the humanities part of that. So universities organize themselves based on disciplines. We're familiar with some of those, right? Biology, economics, history, etc. The humanities in general are a way of looking at knowledge by close reading primary sources, doing a lot of critical reading and writing, asking ethical questions both about the past and about the present. And the humanities at Bucknell comprise history, philosophy, religious studies, English, the languages, women & gender studies, et cetera. So it's this really sort of dynamic field of study, which brings together many different ways of looking at knowledge, thinking about human experience.

  And then when we talk about the health humanities, we're talking about bringing all those strengths to bear on thinking about health specifically, right? This is not thinking about health purely in a biomedical context, but it's asking questions like who has access to care? What does that care look like? What have patient experiences been in the past? How might students learn how to engage more empathetically with their patients in the future?

  [0:03:01] BT: Yeah, it sounds like it's really designed to give students who are looking to work in health or medicine a well-rounded view of that kind of beyond technically what's happening in the body at any given time. And so let's dig into a little bit of what that looks like at Bucknell in the classroom. You mentioned 13 different faculty. What kinds of ideas, classes, or experiences do students encounter within the program with this wide array of teaching?

  [0:03:25] JT: Yeah, so that's great. Thank you for asking that. I'll talk first about the minor, and then I can talk about the other things that we do — because we are a minor, but we are a minor plus. So the minor is five courses. The first and only, honestly, required course is called Introduction to the Health Humanities. It's a 100-level course. It really gives students a broad overview of what they might encounter in the program moving forward. Then students can choose from a wide range of classes for the rest of their coursework.

  So just to give students and potential listeners a sense, I brought in our offerings from last year just to, you know, kind of give us an array. So last year, we were offering, obviously, the introductory course. We were offering Medical Anthropology, Bioethics, Philosophy of Science, Environmental Ethics, Environmental Health & Climate. These classes were coming from many different departments, but you can see some of the themes that we're working with, right? Environment, ethics. In other semesters, we've thought very deeply about gender and about race.

  In addition to the minor, we offer regular social events for students, particularly bringing together students from the pre-health program with students from health humanities. There's oftentimes, and we might talk about this later, a lot of crossover in those two populations. But we have social events every semester. Really, lunches for students to meet each other and meet the faculty in the program.

  We have also offered over time a series of campus-wide intellectual events, right? So book groups, author visits. Also, in the spring of 2023, my favorite event that we organized was an open forum on prisons during COVID. And what that did was bring together people who had been incarcerated during COVID with attorneys for really a roundtable discussion about what the experience of COVID-19 had been for those who were incarcerated at the time. That event was standing room only. It was really exciting. I still run into people who talk about that around campus.

  [0:05:24] BHA: It seems like in many ways, this program and the programming that you're offering is touching so many different corners of campus and so many different pockets and populations of students. I'm curious from your vantage point in the history department, what's the most exciting thing about the existence of this program at Bucknell?

  [0:05:39] JT: Yeah, so I think one of the most exciting things is the fact that Bucknell is one of the only undergraduate institutions in the country that has an actual health humanities program. Students and listeners may understand or may be aware of programs at other universities, which are health studies or medical humanities. And these are all great programs, but they're still very much focused on health from a medical perspective, right? What Bucknell can offer is this wide range of faculty expertise, both in the classroom and research-wise, which is really bringing a humanistic focus to the study of health. Honestly, as a historian of medicine housed in a history department, it's great to be able to collaborate with my colleagues in religious studies, in philosophy, in anthropology, just to really think about how can we make health this really engaging, dynamic field of conversation for the campus.

  [0:06:30] BT: We've talked about the kind of convergence of different types of students in a program like this. But I'd be curious if I could ask you more directly, who would you say the minor in particular is intended for? We mentioned up top, when students think of health studies or health careers, they probably think of hard sciences or clinical medical experience. And so what might make this academic track relevant for a student who knows they want to become a surgeon, for example?

  [0:06:55] JT: Yeah, no, that's a great question. And I think maybe later on we can talk a little bit about why humanities are very attractive as a background for applicants to medical school. I would say the health humanities minor is open to anyone. It is five courses. It's very flexible. It is easy to fit into your other coursework, whatever that may be.

  I will say that because of our deep collaborations with the pre-health program, over 75% of our current minors are coming out of STEM fields. We have a growing number coming out of biomedical engineering in particular, which is really exciting for us. And we do have a smattering of humanities and social sciences students, but we are really finding that we appeal quite strongly to students who are in the STEM fields and intending a career either in clinical practice, in clinical research, in graduate work, in the sciences in some way.

  Part of that is how attractive that makes an applicant look to graduate schools, professional schools, et cetera. But it's also, I think, students realize that medical school is going to teach them the science background they need, the technical background they need to — to go back to your example — be a surgeon in the operating room, right? We're not going to be able to teach people that here. But what medical school doesn't have the time and focus to teach people is how to understand the full complexity of the patients they interact with, and also how to engage empathetically with patients. And that's really some of the skills that we're forming for students in the classroom here.

  [0:08:23] BHA: I have to imagine that the experience of the health humanities program then gives medical school applicants, or students applying for careers in clinical work, really great content and examples to draw from and to pull from when they have those next step professional experiences beyond Bucknell. I'd like to zoom in on the liberal arts aspect. Bucknell builds itself as a place where professional training and intellectual curiosity entwine to produce well-rounded people, not just job seekers. From your perspective, what does the liberal arts lens on health provide that could be absent from a narrowly focused pre-professional program?

  [0:09:01] JT: So I'll start by just talking in a broad way before we zoom in on the liberal arts experience. Listeners may be aware that if we are thinking about any individual or any community's health outcomes in life, 60% of all of the factors that go into determining somebody's health outcomes come from the neighborhood that they were born into, right? They don't come from your genetics, et cetera, right? If we start to ask, "How do we want to understand that, right? How do we want to understand the fact that the social determinants of health really do constitute the majority of what will determine our health outcomes in life?" It's the liberal arts that's going to take us there, right?

  Yes, we can understand the genetics, we can understand the cellular mechanisms through work in the sciences, right? That's vital, that's essential. But being able to understand the historical dimensions, the sociological dimensions that make up the outcomes for both individuals and communities, we need a broad range of disciplinary experience and background to bear on understanding those larger questions.

  [0:10:03] BT: And I'm guessing with this program's investment in all of those social determinants of health and that well-rounded view of health outcomes, I'm guessing students don't have to wait to put that into practice. Like all Bucknell programs, there's an emphasis on real-world immersion in health humanities, where students are challenged to put their learning into action. So what does that look like within the minor?

  [0:10:22] JT: Yeah. So one of our goals as we…This is a relatively new program. We're young, we're building ourselves out. So one of our goals is definitely to build up a slate of community-engaged experiences and internships.

  Some of the things we're thinking about are student work in hospice, student work with the local food bank to coordinate what they provide to their clients with what their clients need nutritionally. I will say…I will give you two examples of classes which have run in the recent past and/or next semester as a way to understand how we're getting students into the community already.

  So last spring, I taught History of Health and Medicine in the 20th-century United States, but I did not teach that on campus. I taught that as an Inside-Out class. This is a class in our prison education program. So what it meant was that eight health humanities students came with me once a week to SCI Muncy, which is the local women's prison. It's located about 25 minutes from campus. And for three hours, we sat in a classroom with eight Muncy students, and we learned the history of health and medicine together. And I think for the Bucknell students who participated in that class, it really changed their understanding of what their career trajectory was going to be, right? All of these students had professional ambitions in the healthcare field. And many of them left with a far richer understanding of women's health, of correctional health, and some with ambitions of trying to intervene either on a clinical or a policy level into that field.

  There's a class running next semester in the biomedical engineering department called Human Centered Design. This is a class which is getting students into the community to figure out ways to make design human friendly, right? For example, one of the projects that that class is going to participate in is working with the Bucknell Farm and looking at the range of tools which exist there, which are all built for a "standard-sized male body" and figuring out how to redesign those tools for the people who actually work there. And that class is saving a third of its seats for health humanities minors, right? Really bringing students into the classroom itself, and then widening that out to either the Bucknell community or the broader community.

  [0:12:39] BHA: It is clearly illustrated in those examples that community outreach is embedded into this program in a really big way, in a way that's been really meaningful with tangible impacts far beyond the Bucknell community itself. When you think about where Bucknell is located in a small college town, we're a region where healthcare is a big part of the local landscape and rural healthcare is especially important. How does the health humanities program benefit from that context and connect students to the realities of rural healthcare?

  [0:13:08] JT: Yeah, no, I think that's a really important question and acknowledgement, right? We exist in a place with very particular social determinants of health, going back to our earlier conversation, right? So there's high levels of poverty, there's high levels of particular kinds of disease here, right?, which are related to food supply, food availability, but also people's access to transportation. There is a lack of access of public transportation, as there is in most rural areas, right? Which makes it hard for people with fewer financial resources to make it to grocery stores, the farmer's market, etc.

  Certainly, as we were designing the program, and as a piece of that, in 2021, we received a significant financial grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. We wanted very much to place our program within the broader regional context of what are the particular health challenges here? What are the particular health possibilities here? Right? It's a beautiful region, right? We have access to green space in ways that a lot of other communities simply do not based on their location. Certainly, as we build the program out, as we build towards more community-involved internships, externships, and engagements, keeping the rural context front and center is very important.

  I'll also mention that currently the University is working with Geisinger to develop a partnership between the undergraduate program here and the medical program there. And that's very much geared towards keeping students practicing in a rural context, right? Because as I'm sure listeners are aware, there's a dearth of providers in rural areas.

  [0:14:45] BT: You've mentioned how attractive this program is to students who want to become medical practitioners. And based on everything you've said about the classroom work and the real world immersion, the way that students get connected with the realities of what healthcare looks like in a region like this, I can see why.

  And while Bucknell does not have dedicated pre-med degree tracks, we do have a pre-health advising program for students who are on that particular career path. And so how closely does your program with all of those experiential learning opportunities work with our pre-health advisors to support students' journeys?

  [0:15:17] JT: Yes. The pre-health program advisor is Dr. Allison Patterson. She is a genius. She is a whiz. She is one of our earliest and closest supporters. She is the reason why before we were officially a program, our classes were all full. Because she proselytized, talked to all of her pre-health students about the benefits of the health humanities program. And she's been wonderful to work with. I would say the two programs are very closely integrated. The student lunches that I talked about earlier, those are very much collaborations between the pre-health program and the health humanities program. Yes, I would say for students either coming in through the pre-health program or students coming in through health humanities, if that connection is one that you want to establish or maintain, it's very easy to do so.

  [0:16:02] BHA: Can you tell us more about the benefits of a well-rounded education from a post-grad standpoint? Are the knowledge and skills students learn in health humanities something graduate or medical schools are looking for? How can this impact students' career well into their professional years?

  [0:16:16] JT: Yeah. Medical schools, in fact, look at training in the humanities very positively. So I brought in some information from the American Medical Association, just to be a nerd here. What they found was that in the 2023-24 application cycle, the matriculation or entrance rate for students with majors in biology was lower than for majors in the humanities to medical school, right? And significantly lower. So students coming out of biology were accepted more or less around 44%, whereas students with majors or at least significant background in the humanities were more around 53%. What I found even more surprising than that is that students coming out of the humanities got higher scores on average on their MCAT than students coming out of the biological sciences, which I thought was super interesting.

  So what it's showing us is that med schools are really interested in students with preparation in the humanities. And that preparation in the humanities actually might prepare you more for medical school work, which seems a little counterintuitive on the one hand, but I think that's more a reflection of how our society has started to think very narrowly about what it means to be a doctor.

  I mean, I'll just say on a personal level, my primary care, who I love, his background is in art history, which I find to be amazing, right? It gives him a lot to be able to talk about, et cetera. Also, a lot of medical schools now have medical humanities integrated into their curriculum. So just as an example, Stanford, Drexel, George Washington, all of these sort of top medical schools have a medical humanities, number one, required course for all students, but they also offer additional coursework in it.

  I think the message that's telling us is that the medical humanities, the health humanities are spreading. They're understood to be a way in which students who intend post-grad or professional work in healthcare can demonstrate their skills, can distinguish themselves from other applicants.

  I tend to work a lot with students writing their personal essays for graduate work. And one thing that I found is that students who are able to talk with complexity about the humanities coursework that they've done seem to be pleased with their graduate application cycle.

  [0:18:30] BT: That's really great evidence for why a program like this exists at Bucknell and why it is designed so intentionally to provide students with that well-roundedness. With that ability to think through the complexities of not just providing medical care, but with the human story of health as a whole. And so for a high school student thinking, "I want to be a doctor or a nurse, or a PA, or even work in public health at an administrative level," what advice would you give about choosing a college that will give them that well-rounded, holistic education?

  [0:19:00] JT: I would say certainly pick a school where you can do the science prep that you need, right? That's a no-brainer. You're going to have to show that you've done certain kinds of courses. You're going to be able to have to pass the MCAT. Certainly, pick a school where you feel like the science education is robust. But you also should pick a school where you can pursue something that you are passionate about, which will distinguish you, right?

  So that could look different for a lot of different people. Some people may be really into creative writing. Some people may be into dance, right? Some people may be very passionate about history — not to make a pitch for my own department, but it's great. But go somewhere where you can also pursue that because you might be passionate about STEM and that's fantastic. You should be. But if you can show potential employers, potential graduate schools, then in fact you are STEM+, that's going to look really positive for you.

  [0:19:55] BHA: As an admissions counselor who travels and recruits and connects with students on the high school level considering their college options, this episode and learning more about the health humanities program gives me so much content to speak to that potential future doctor or that student with healthcare aspirations, and really the holistic approach that they can get at a really great liberal arts university like Bucknell. Thank you so much for joining us.

  [0:20:19] JT: Oh, thank you for having me.

  [0:20:20] BT: And thanks to everyone out there for listening. If you're a fan of the podcast, please take a minute to rate, subscribe, and share this episode with the students and families in your life.

  [0:20:28] BHA: We'll be back with another new episode in a few weeks. In the meantime, you can send your questions, comments, and episode ideas to podcast@bucknell.edu. We read every note you send.

  [0:20:38] BT: And you're invited to follow Bucknell on your favorite social media apps. Just look for @bucknellu on Instagram, Facebook, X, YouTube, and TikTok. You can also follow our student-run Instagram account, which is @iamraybucknell, where you might meet some of our health humanity students.

  [0:20:53] BHA: Until next time, keep reaching for your dreams and your dream school.

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