MSS Humanities and Arts in Medicine (McHAM)

About the Club

We are a group of medical students who believe that the arts and humanities portray a side of medicine and the experience of illness, suffering, and healing that is not contained in the medical curriculum. What the arts and humanities can offer is to immerse us in the perspectives of people who we might otherwise find difficult to understand, challenge our assumptions and pre-conceived notions of groups of people and disease, and remind us of the beauty and complexity of human experience. In engaging with the arts and humanities during our time as medical students, our hope is that we will emerge from our current training not only competent, knowledgeable, and technically skilled, but also young doctors who are empathetic, sensitive to diverse perspectives, comfortable with the complexities and ambiguities of the human condition, and better able to connect with people from all walks of life who will be our patients.

We aim to create a space where medical students can remain in touch with their artistic and creative sides during the busy pace of medical school. This is accomplished by events organized by our team, ranging from monthly check-in discussion groups to book clubs meetings to artistic endeavors.