Actionable companion · School leadership and instructional improvement
From leadership research to district action: Teaching and learning medical humanities in medical school: a student's perspective on professional practice curriculum in Australia
AI-assisted editorial implementation guide. Proposed district actions are separate from the original authors’ findings and recommendations. Independent peer review of this guide is not asserted.
Evidence and transfer
Education-related source: verify which participants, institutions and outcomes were actually studied before district adoption. Source publication type: research-article. License and identity checks do not establish study quality or causality.
Original authors’ abstract, reproduced under the source license:
The growing integration of the medical humanities in medical school curricula highlights its importance in the development of culturally safe, patient-centred clinicians. Internationally, medical schools attempt to increase student engagement through course electives, different modes of assessment and diverse content delivery. At the University of Melbourne, the Professional Practice program aims to provide an easy, engaging way of exposing students to the medical humanities, including reflective practice, collaborative practice, leadership, advocacy, professional identity formation, medical ethics and law. However, students’ perceptions of the medical humanities may prevent desired outcomes from being reached. We discuss the student experience of the Professional Practice curriculum through a collaboration between a student, tutor and course designers focusing on student engagement and perspectives of the program. Overall, students felt uncomfortable with the flexibility and ambiguity of the medical humanities when compared to the rigidity of biomedical knowledge. Additionally, modes of assessment typically used in the humanities such as reflective writing were found to be unpopular. Students’ involvement in the co-facilitation of classes helped develop communication skills and leadership but overall participation was still dependent on individual factors. Ultimately, the medical school and student body must work together to develop a medical humanities curriculum that is both complementary and viewed as of equal importance to the clinical curriculum.
Study methods
The following student reflection was devised in collaboration between a student enrolled in the PP program, one of the course tutors, and two course designers, to explore student experiences of the medical humanities in medical school curriculum. Intentional effort was made to focus on student perspectives of PP and contextualise these within the broader literature. Points of discussion included overall student views of PP, utility of assessments and key experiences. However, the central focus was on students’ engagement with the coursework, and in particular the co-facilitation process, which forms an integral part of the course in senior years. While best efforts were made to capture the overall impression of the cohort, this reflection ultimately represents an individual student’s experience. Additionally, experiences are likely to be diverse, and will be influenced by clinical placement site and cohort, due to differences in exposure to real ethical dilemmas, clinical exposure and teaching staff. Nonetheless, the reflection provides a unique perspective capturing current opinions of the medical humanities amongst medical students.
Limitations
No passage was selected automatically. Inspect the complete source before adopting a practice.
A 90-day district inquiry
- Days 1–15 · Appraise. Read the source methods, recruitment, comparator, outcomes and limitations. Record how the study setting differs from your district and which claim the design can support.
- Days 16–30 · Design. Choose one school improvement question with teachers. Protect a short shared planning cycle, agree an instructional change and use a common rubric for examining student work. Agree participation, privacy protections, baseline and stopping rules before starting.
- Days 31–60 · Observe. Collect the pre-agreed measures, keep a log of implementation changes and invite confidential voluntary feedback. Preserve existing support for staff and learners.
- Days 61–90 · Decide. Review implementation fidelity, teacher time and independently scored student work against a recorded baseline. Examine access differences and competing explanations before attributing changes to leadership. Make a dated decision to stop, revise or extend the inquiry.
Board decision brief
Present the local problem, source setting, evidence limits, intervention, responsible owner, total cost, measured changes and uncertainty. Separate staff perceptions, implementation measures and student learning outcomes.
Attribution and reuse
Matthew Melhem; Vinita Rane; Charlotte Denniston; George P. Drewett. Teaching and learning medical humanities in medical school: a student's perspective on professional practice curriculum in Australia. Monash Bioethics Review (2025-06-30). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40592-025-00258-x
Prepared 2026-11-07. Source authorship and DOI are preserved. The abstract and source passages are attributed extracts; this editorial guide is offered under the same CC BY 4.0 license.