21 November 2023 – Neil Turner & Helen Cameron

Humanities for healthcare

How the arts can help us cope

Music, stories, and poems help us understand ourselves and think about deeper issues in the world around us. We turn to them in times of crisis, to help us cope with what life and death throw at us. So can humanities help in a medical setting too?

The Scottish Medical Humanities Project aims to answer this with resources to help healthcare professionals and patients. In this talk, Neil and Helen will explain about the project, and try out some potential new items on us.

Neil Turner and Helen Cameron

Neil Turner is a recently retired professor of nephrology (kidney medicine) who continues to be involved in a number of projects around giving patients and staff better information, producing online educational resources that can be used freely internationally, and in medical humanities.

Links: Scottish Humanities project, Neil's blog.

Helen Cameron recently retired from leading the new medical school at Aston University in Birmingham, from which the first cohort of students are now working as Year 1 Foundation Doctors around the UK. She has extensive experience of medicine and medical education, including recently overseeing development of new programmes for nursing and physician-assistants. She is particularly interested in how to develop the non-factual and non-technical skills of healthcare students and professionals.