The ‘Clinical Humanities & Wellbeing programme’- sustainable healthcare education for an era of uncertainty

Abstract

This article presents a case study where integration of arts and humanities into a clinical programme is being implemented at scale, as core mandatory learning for all students within a UK dental, undergraduate context. The cross-disciplinary programme described, that integrates the Humanities with Clinical Sciences, is a longitudinal professional identity formation curriculum for sustainable oral healthcare which aligns with the UK dental regulator’s proposals for a ‘safe practitioner’ framework for new graduates. The Clinical Humanities & Wellbeing modules embrace the emotional and attitudinal aspects of learning and educate clinical students for the practical wisdom (phronesis) required to deliver 21st century oral healthcare in an era of uncertainty. The overarching aim of the curriculum and its accompanying assessment is to promote critical reflection, student insight and development of integrity, reflexivity, and responsibility. Enabling the subjectification of professional identity formation in this cross-disciplinary way aims to develop students as ‘safe practitioners’, with increased professional autonomy, responsible for their own actions, and who are better equipped for the uncertainties and phronesis of clinical practice. At present, the programme is being evaluated, employing illuminative evaluation methodology and we present some tentative initial findings. The authors believe that this unique approach and signature pedagogy is, with careful curation, transferrable to other health professions’ contexts.

Keywords:

• Clinical Humanities
• sustainable healthcare education
• professional identity formation
• safe practitioner
• subjectification
• practical wisdom
• reflexivity
• radical interdisciplinarity

Acknowledgments

We would like to take the opportunity to thank our students for their collaboration in research and feedback on the modules with whom we have co-created the Clinical Humanities & Wellbeing programme. We would also like to thank our colleagues at King’s for their expertise and support and our inspirational guest speakers from around the world who work with us to deliver much of the teaching, including, Dr Ahmed Hankir, Dr Sue Stuart-Smith, Drs Brittany Seymour and Donna Hackley from Harvard School of Dental Medicine, Dr’s Naoko Seki and Yuna Kanamori from Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Dr Hedy Wald, from Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Ms Lauren Sutherland K.C, Mr Ashok Handa, Professor Roger Kneebone and Professor Rosie Perkins to name but a few.

Authors’ contributions

FSZ is the Clinical Humanities& Wellbeing programme lead at King’s. She contributed to (1) conception and design, analysis, and interpretation of data, (2) drafting the article and revising it critically for important intellectual content. JP is the Clinical Humanities assessment lead and contributed to (1) design, analysis, and interpretation of data, (2) drafting the article. KP is the Dean of Education within the Faculty of Dentistry, Oral & Craniofacial Sciences at King’s responsible for integrating Clinical Humanities & Wellbeing into the dental curriculum and contributed to (1) design, analysis, and interpretation of data, (2) drafting the article. All authors (FSZ, JP and KP) contributed to the revision of the paper, final approval of the submitted version and have agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

Informed consent

In addition to the King’s College London ethical approval reference for educational research LRM-20/21-14369 the four students mentioned in this article gave their written consent for their work to be included.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.