Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Application of Humanistic and Social Knowledge to Medicine

University Of California-San Diego, La Jolla CA

Investigators

Abstract

NSF Proposal 1702988 Principal Investigator: John H. Evans Graduate Student: Lauren D. Olsen Title: Interdisciplinary Collaboration and Medical Curricular Change Abstract This project will address how scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds successfully integrate humanistic and social scientific knowledge with biomedical knowledge in the education of medical students, with the overarching objective of improving future patient care. Amidst a litany of crises confronting the American medical profession at the turn of the 21st century (from patient satisfaction to widespread health and health care disparities to complex health care systems), the leaders of the medical profession made the education objective of 'understanding people' a national priority for medical education. Such a move entails an integration of humanistic and social scientific knowledge into what traditionally is a biomedical learning and work environment. This project will enhance the basic theoretical and practical understanding of how humanistic and social scientific knowledge is produced, evaluated, and applied, identifying the institutional features of universities that encourage productive relationships between the liberal and practical arts. This project will be both a platform for increasing each university's institutional capacity for diversity and inclusion, as well as a springboard for university-based educational programs to evaluate various initiatives pitched to improve patient care. In addition, this project will contribute to the improvement of STEM education and educator development, by revealing how medical educators collaborate across epistemological and methodological divides toward achieving their goals. Finally, by better understanding the challenges that beset interdisciplinary collaboration between the liberal and practical arts, universities will be able to establish more empirically-informed programming that traditional and interdisciplinary programs can implement. The idea that scientific knowledge should be used to improve society has long underwritten the organization of academic knowledge production and evaluation. The cultural value of applying scientific knowledge to solve social problems has recently been supplemented by the promise of interdisciplinary collaboration. With diverse disciplinary perspectives concentrated on a single social problem, the logic goes, the better the solution. Despite the prevalence of humanistic and social scientific knowledge becoming increasingly called upon to contribute in applied and interdisciplinary ways, there is a remarkable lack of understanding about how scholars successfully apply these forms of knowledge in interdisciplinary contexts. This project takes up that task by examining how humanistic and social scientific knowledge is successfully integrated with biomedical knowledge into medical education, paying close attention to how scholars with different epistemological and methodological commitments construct how humanistic and social scientific knowledge is 'relevant' for medical practice and how scholars negotiate these differences while engaging in interdisciplinary collaboration. To answer these questions, this project uses in-depth, semi-structured interviews with humanities scholars, social science scholars, medical educators, and medical students; historical data from professional and legislative decisions, curricular materials, and publications; and non-participant observation at scientific meetings.