Physicians who major in the humanities?

 There are three great questions which in life we have to ask over and over again to answer:

   Is it right or wrong?
   Is it true or false?
   Is it beautiful or ugly?

Our education ought to help us to answer these questions.

                                                                                                     John Lubbock

In English Majors Can Be Doctors Too, Mindshift May 28, 2015, Julie Rovner reports that New York's Mt. Sinai's medical school admits medical students from liberal arts programs as well as those from the science-oriented pre-med programs.

The HuMed program dates back to 1987, when Dr. Nathan Kase, who was dean of medical education at the time, wanted to do something about what had become known as pre-med syndrome. Schools across the country were worried that the striving for a straight-A report card and high test scores was actually producing sub-par doctors. Applicants — and, consequently, medical students — were too single-minded.

Kase, according to Muller, “really had a firm belief that you couldn’t be a good doctor and a well-rounded doctor — relate to patients and communicate with them — unless you really had a good grounding in the liberal arts.”

So Mount Sinai began accepting humanities majors from a handful of top-flight liberal arts schools after their second year of college. These students are expected to continue to follow their nonscientific interests for the remainder of their college careers.

Hmmm, a doctor who can relate to his/her patients? A doctor versed in the humanities rather than chemistry?

Despite the movement for STEM programs to transition to STEAM programs (adding an A for the Arts), I am concerned that our drive to turn every student into a computer programmer or engineer will fail to recognize that the understanding of human nature derived from reading literature, philosophy, history, and religion is critical.

• I want my doctor to treat me as a whole human being, not simply an organism consisting of complex chemical reactions.
• I want my computer programmers to understand the need for a human-oriented interface on the systems they design.
• I want bridge engineers to look at both function and form and create structures that are safe and aesthetically appealing.

I would bet dollars to donuts, it will be the ability to relate technology/science/math to the human condition that will make tomorrow's workers job secure.