[3] Medical humanities can be defined as an interdisciplinary, and increasingly international endeavor that draws on the creative and intellectual strengths of diverse disciplines, including literature, art, creative writing, drama, film, music, philosophy, ethical decision making, anthropology, and history, in pursuit of medical educational goals.
[8] The humanities also assist and attempt to create a closer or more meaningful relationship between medical practitioners and their peers/patients.
[10] Various academic institutions offer courses of study in the ethics of medical humanities.
Literature and medicine is flourishing in undergraduate programs[11] and in medical schools at all levels.
The rationale for using literature and medicine in medical education is three-fold: reading the stories of patients and writing about their experiences gives doctors in training the tools they need to better understand their patients; discussing and reflecting on literature brings the medical practitioner's biases and assumptions into focus, heightening awareness; and reading literature requires critical thinking and empathetic awareness about moral issues in medicine.