Suhad Daher-Nashif
ABSTRACT
A culturally competent approach to teach humanities in international medical school: potential frameworks and lessons learned
Suhad Daher-Nashif
College of Medicine, Qatar University
Tanya Kane
College of Medicine, Qatar University
Background: This paper describes the development of a culturally competent medical humanities course for second and third-year medical students at the ethnically diverse College of Qatar University. First taught in 2016, the elective seminar “Medicine and the Arts” was restructured in 2017 to cultivate an appreciation of the symbiotic relationship between medicine, art, and humanities, and to foster cultural competence among the students.
Methods: Results and tips are based on our experiences and past reports.
Results: In designing a course for students immersed in an Arab-Muslim context, we encountered two challenges: the discipline’s privileging of a predominantly Western canon of arts and humanities, and the largely Euro-American-centric and unilateral framing of concepts e.g., the doctor-patient relationship, patient-centered approach, patient experiences, and meanings of health and illness. To circumvent these challenges, we followed the Purnell Model for Cultural Competence, adopted the interdisciplinary approach, and employed an intersectionality framework to build and deliver a culturally competent course exploring the nexus of arts, humanities, and medicine.
In addition to these tips on which frameworks to adopt and how to structure the course, we recommend a visual literacy workshop to help them develop the ability to recognize and understand ideas conveyed through art. Furthermore, we recommend deep conversations about artistic portrayals of medicine from different cultural contexts as tools for developing cultural awareness. Lastly, we recommend that these discussions adopt a student-centered approach, where students inform about their experiences and their own health and illness determinants, in order to develop their knowledge and practice of holism and patient centered approach, and other issues related to humanities and social sciences.
Conclusions: Adopting and implementing a culturally competent approach to medical education, alongside interdisciplinary and intersectionality concepts, are potential conceptual frameworks to structure a course that uses art works to inform about the link between humanities, social sciences and medical care.
ABSTRACT
Crisis, feminism, and existentialism: Re-reading El-Saadawi's Memoirs of a Woman Doctor in COVID -19 times
Suhad Daher-Nashif
College of Medicine, Qatar University
In her Memoirs of a Woman Doctor, Dr. Nawal El-Saadawi, an Egyptian physician, writer and feminist, describes the development of her existential questions as a human being and a doctor throughout her life changes and the interaction with her socio-cultural patriarchal context. Following a crisis in her professional identity, Dr. El-Saadawi questions the meaning of doctoring, the doctor-patient relationship, and life as well as the absurdity of death and alienation. A young woman died while giving birth to her first child, and Dr. El-Saadawi’s failure to save the woman’s life changed her self-positioning in relation to medicine and the sanctify of science. This experience caused her to sanctify human beings and the humanity of doctors, rather than sanctifying their knowledge only, and created an acute awareness of the link between her body, mind and soul. In the end, she finds relief for her soul in her love for a musician and attributes music to rescuing her from darkness.
Drawing on content-thematic analysis of the memoirs, in this presentation I make analogy between the crisis that Dr. El-Saadawi experienced, and potential crisis that health care providers (HCPs) faced during their work in the first stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Through the existential and philosophical questions suggested by Dr. El-Saadawi, in this presentation, I suggest that we look behind the scenes of the ICU and think in-depth about Health care providers’ existential experiences during the COVID-19 outbreak – a global crisis that can be very personal for the HCPs. We will discuss, how the crisis and facing death on daily basis, could influence healthcare providers' existential and philosophical perceptions, when they are unable to control a virus and save lives.
BIO
Dr. Suhad Daher-Nashif is an Assistant Professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences in the College of Medicine at Qatar University. Her academic and professional backgrounds involve medical and social disciplines. She holds Master of Health Sciences in Occupational Therapy and PhD in Sociology and Soc. Anthropology. Her main research work dismantles the intersectionality between science, society, politics, and bureaucracy within the modern health systems in the MENA region. She takes forensic medicine, mental health and medical education as her main fields of research. Dr. Nashif is passionate to analyze art works that inform about people’s experiences in health care settings and published works on cinema and literature. She writes short stories in Arabic, inspired by subjects’ voices in her fieldwork. Dr. Nashif passionate to lead and co-develop social and behavioral sciences curricula and humanities courses in Health professions education.
Among her most recent publications:
- Daher‐Nashif, S. (2022). In sickness and in health: The politics of public health and their implications during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Sociology Compass, 16(1), e12949.
- Daher-Nashif, S. (2021). Literature as a Pedagogical Tool in Medical Education: The Silent Patient Case. Humanities, 10(3), 95.