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University of Cape Town

Medicine and the Arts: Humanising Healthcare

University of Cape Town via FutureLearn

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Overview

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This free online course will explore the intersection of medicine, medical anthropology and the creative arts. Through each of its six weeks, we’ll visit a new aspect of human life and consider it from the perspectives of people working in health sciences, social sciences and the arts.

Explore the emerging field of medical humanities

The course will introduce you to the emerging field of medical humanities and the concept of whole person care, via these six themes:

  • The Heart of the Matter: A Matter of the Heart
  • Children’s Voices and Healing
  • Mind, Art and Play
  • Reproduction and Innovation
  • At the Edge: Madness and Medicine
  • Death and the Corpse

Together, we’ll question our propensity to separate the body from the mind in healthcare, consider what defines humanity, and share points of connection and difference between art and medicine.

Learn with specialists from diverse fields

Contributors to the course will include a psychologist, psychiatrist, heart surgeon, pathologist, oncologist, sociologist, poet and visual artist. They will pose critical questions about how we deal with health, healing and being human.

Each has been filmed on location in Cape Town, including at the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital, the Heart of Cape Town Museum, and the Pathology Learning Centre.

Develop and discuss your own ideas

The course will encourage you to discuss your ideas with learners all over the world, and reflect on the ways in which bodies, health, social life, culture and the imagination intersect in your local setting. Together, we’ll ask:

  • How is it that academic disciplines have become so rigid in their focus that they sometimes struggle to talk meaningfully to general audiences and other specialists?
  • And what potential can we unlock by combining different fields of expertise and the silos of knowledge that otherwise separate them?

By the end of the course, you’ll understand multiple, complex perspectives on health, illness and healing, and be able to create alternative responses to important health challenges.

You can find out more in Susan Levine and Steve Reid’s post for the FutureLearn blog: “Introducing medical humanities: a new, interdisciplinary approach to healthcare.”

This course is open to everyone. All that’s required is an interest in medicine, the arts or social sciences.

Syllabus

  • The Heart of the Matter: A Matter of the Heart
    • Introduction to Medicine and the Arts
    • Issues of the Heart
    • Perspectives
    • In Dialogue
    • What's next
  • Children's Voices and Healing
    • Issues of children’s voices
    • Perspectives
    • In dialogue
    • Assignment
    • What's next
  • Mind, Art and Play
    • Issues
    • Perspectives
    • In dialogue on art and play
    • What's next
  • Reproduction and Innovation
    • Issues
    • Perspectives
    • In dialogue
    • What's next
  • Mental Health and the Arts
    • Issues
    • Perspectives
    • In dialogue
    • Assignment
    • What's next
  • Death and the Corpse
    • Issues
    • Perspectives
    • In dialogue
    • Discussions
    • Last words

Taught by

Steve Reid and Susan Levine

Reviews

4.9 rating, based on 104 Class Central reviews

4.8 rating at FutureLearn based on 76 ratings

Start your review of Medicine and the Arts: Humanising Healthcare

  • Jacqui
    I did this course totally out of personal interest and I absolutely loved it. The Future learn platform was really easy to navigate and user-friendly. The subject matter was diverse and totally interesting, with short mini lectures and reading material. I did all the reading but I did not do the assignments as I had too little time, but I do not think that should put anybody off. The online community was also wonderful and interesting. It is quite something to realize you are studying with people from all over the world. Highly recommended.
  • Anonymous
    I LOVED this course and its interdisciplinary approach. The only thing that I think is lacking is non-academic sources and more perspectives from patients and people. I think there were brief mentions where you do (like the perspective of the kid…
  • Profile image for Rajkumar Benny
    Rajkumar Benny
    This is exactly the kind of course that I've been looking for quite some time, and I'm glad to have found it with the help of the learning platform-'Futurelearn'. Since I'm doing a different degree altogether, I took this course out of pure interest…
  • It was a heart-expanding experience of learning while walking.
    I have no doubt that I come out of the experience equipped with a broader perspective than I had with the beginning of the course. Perspective that makes me a better professional, but no less importantly, a better person.
    The learning experience only strengthened my sense of mission to convey the message to the various layers of human society in which I live.
    Mainly distribute it among professionals in the field of medicine in general, including those dealing with mental health ..
    Thank you all for the opportunity.
    It was a great privilege
  • Anonymous
    Excellent! what a journey! such incredible and knowledgable people. up-to-date literature, and very, very interesting themes.
  • Anonymous
    A new subject and approach for me. Very interesting and I hope the combination of the arts with conventional medical care as part of the treatment of long-term illness becomes widespread. I was especially interested because the course was presented…
  • Anonymous
    This a beautifully structured course whereyou really feel you have been on a learning journey. I was fearful that this might be a course heavily dominated by the medical with just some arts stuff added in as "add ons", but no, it truly fulfils it…
  • Anonymous
    This is an amazing course that explores 6 different areas within medicine and how the humanities and the Arts interacts or can affect it. While there are two main leaders of the course, they utilize many doctors, artists, and professors to detail ea…
  • Chrissie Loveday
    I would consider this course a gift for life in the sense of content and how thought provoking it is . I learnt a great deal about South Africa and its unique challenges and was mightily impressed by the commitment of the speakers on this course and…
  • Gerard Harrington
    I can easily say that this course opened new vistas for me and inspired me more than any other online course I’ve taken -- and I’ve taken courses through Coursera, edX and FutureLearn. I felt exhilarated by what I experienced as the fresh and vitally important perspectives the course presented about the many intersections among medicine, health, and human society and culture. I also felt excited to hear, read, and learn from such accomplished people in so many fields -- and I loved that they spoke, wrote, and taught from South Africa. As Professor Steve Reid said, coming from South Africa “provided a voice from, as it were, the global South.” It is a voice I intend to hear more from.
  • Anonymous
    I found this a really good course. The approach is exciting, and is different from traditional approaches to medicine. It gives you a different way of seeing an area that we think we know. I have taken quite a lot of MOOCs, mainly free ones, as I am…
  • Anonymous
    I have enjoyed the course, I have learned so much from the different weeks. every presentation has been insightful and intriguing. I'm glad I was part of the course
  • Anonymous
    This course was inspiring and gave me further insight into how to analyze medicine and health practices from a more humanitarian perspective
  • Anonymous
    A great platform that allows for great engagement and brings together topics that are usually kept separate from one another. Being able to consider healing, the body, and the connection between medicine and the arts has really expanded my knowledge on these topics, giving me a greater hunger to learn about all the overlaps these disciplines have, as well as creating a space that facilitated not only my own healing but allowed for an understanding of others within the medical and artistic space.
  • Anonymous
    This course was extremely well organised and brought together a huge range of topics and speakers. I found it really valuable to explore the information communicated along with the examples of art shared throughout the course. All of the speakers were fantastic, but I would like to extend special thanks to Associate Professor Susan Levine and Professor Steve Reid for guiding participants through the course in such a well-structured way.
  • Anonymous
    A hugely enriching course - diverse in ingredients and giving both day jobs (including one as actor-reader stroke recovery and rehab wards) new dimensions... and, most helpfully, more and renewed value to the essential sensitivity / visceral nature - and silence - of a healthy creative practice - which itself can sometimes feel drowned in an ocean of digital technology and mass media noise.
    'Particularly appreciated the light touch / inclusive tone with which the material was delivered A super stimulating multi-layering of ideas and information. Thank you!
  • Anonymous
    I had been very curious about this perspective ofstudy which I think will be very useful, as it is already to rethink and build up a future in some countries if not all. I am amazed of how a suspicion, veri intuitive by my side was fully answered with comments, tasks, wonderful presentations and links. This has been one of the best thing I have explored and done during 2020's Covid quarantine. Congratulations to the UCT, and thank you very much, for opening this wonderful opportunity to public.
  • Anonymous
    I recommend this course from Cape Town University highly. The lead educators, a medical anthropologist and a general practitioner, were joined by other professionals of many disciplines from forensics to poetry, to show how medical care can be humanised through a less biomedical, and more cultural and social approach. Thus the meaning of life events, from human creativity and reproduction, to illness and death, was explored in depth. This sparked so many ideas in my mind I will go forward in my own life enriched.
  • Anonymous
    This is an absolutely brilliant course! Each week you look at a topic within the healthcare system through a different perspective related to the arts, i.e. literature, sociology, anthropology, artistic performance. This broad overview really allows you to generate different perspectives and viewpoints. You will be challenged, you will change your views when you do this course.
  • Anonymous
    This course was able to combine aspects of medicine and arts. It created an interdisciplinary space that allowed fresh eyes and perspectives on most concepts and topics that we are aware of but only through one lens. They created a stimulating way of learning. It helps with showing the possibilities that are presented by interdisciplinary work.

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