| Research, service, and teaching are the three branches of the American health care education system. The realities of funding, the demands of managed care, the sheer volume of medical knowledge and, most immutably, the constraints of time make this noble task all the more difficult. A side effect of these realities, demands, and constraints is the restriction of formal teaching of medical humanities in training program curricula. This work addresses that problem.;A program was developed to expose high school students, who expressed an interest in pursuing a career in medicine and health care, to the medical humanities. Groups of sixteen and seventeen year old high school students participated in conferences on medicine and health care during the summer of 2002. While exposing students to many of the various career paths in medicine and health care, the program also emphasized the importance of studying the medical humanities as an integral part of preparing for the practice of medicine.;A pre-post format questionnaire was used to determine the effect of the conference on student attitudes about the importance of an undergraduate liberal arts curriculum that emphasizes the medical humanities, vis-a-vis a straight science and mathematics program. A total of 1,590 student participants completed the survey. The results demonstrate a shift in attitude away from a heavy concentration in science and mathematics toward a more balanced pre-medical liberal arts curriculum that emphasizes the medical humanities (p < .001).;It is possible to begin education in the medical humanities at the secondary level. This early exposure could provide medical schools with students who are already well versed in the medical humanities, thus relieving some of the educational burden. While not a principle aim of this work, the results suggest that early exposure to the medical humanities helps students recognize their roles as socially conscientious world citizens who may or may not ever enter the medical profession. |
