Abstract

ELADI BANOS, Josep  and  GUARDIOLA, Elena. Usefulness of literary texts in the teaching of health sciences: examples in cardiology. FEM (Ed. impresa) [online]. 2015, vol.18, n.1, pp.5-14. ISSN 2014-9840.  https://dx.doi.org/10.4321/S2014-98322015000100003.

The importance of humanities in the medical training is commonly recognized and it has been suggested that its implementation in the medical curricula as literature and medicine courses. In spite of its viability, there is often difficult to include specific subjects in the already crowded medical curricula. Therefore, it has been suggested the use of literary texts as a teaching tool in traditional subjects. However, there are few publications that analyse the potential usefulness of them. In the present paper three literary works that might be used to illustrate the experience of disease in cardiology are discussed. Two autobiographical texts, Un infart de miocardi of Josep Pla and Monte Sinaí of José Luis Sampedro, and a fiction work, Mémoires d´Hadrien of Marguerite Yourcenar, were chosen. They were reviewed to establish their usefulness to understand the patient´s experience of disease and to reach educative objectives. The paper shows the chosen fragments to illustrate the disease consequences and its usefulness to understand emotional aspects of sickness and the patient-physician relationship is discussed.

Keywords : Emotional aspects; Literature; Patient-physician relationship; Teaching.

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