Why Medical Students Should Watch More Movies To Become Better Doctors

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A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, as Mary Poppins sang in the classic Disney movie. Now medics have been told to watch more films – as well as read more books, go to the theatre and attend more concerts – if they want to become better all round doctors with a good bedside manner.

“The humanities have often been pushed to the side in medical school curricula, but our data suggests that exposure to the arts are linked to important personal qualities for future physicians.” Professor Marc Kahn, Tulane University School of Medicine

Almost 1,000 students at five US medical schools were asked to complete an online questionnaire which included questions regarding both “active” and “passive” involvement concerning engaging in visual arts, singing, playing musical instruments, listening to music, dancing, writing and reading for pleasure, attending theatre, going to museums and galleries, and attending concerts.

Students answered on a scale of 0 “never” to 4 “daily.” As there were 10 such questions, a composite score of “Humanities Exposure” was calculated with a possible range of 0 to 40.

What to watch (possibly)

Awakenings – 1990 American drama film based on Oliver Sacks’s 1973 memoir of the same title. It tells the true story of British neurologist Oliver Sacks, fictionalized as American Malcolm Sayer (portrayed by Robin Williams), who, in 1969, discovered beneficial effects of the drug L-Dopa. He administered it to catatonic patients who survived the 1917–28 epidemic of encephalitis lethargica. Leonard Lowe (played by Robert De Niro) and the rest of the patients were awakened after decades of catatonia and have to deal with a new life in a new time. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards.

The Doctor – 1991 drama film directed by Randa Haines. It is loosely based on Dr. Edward Rosenbaum’s 1988 book, A Taste Of My Own Medicine. The film stars William Hurt as Jack MacKee, a doctor whose bedside manner, even with seriously ill patients, is somewhat lacking. However, he undergoes a transformation in his views about life, illness and human relationships after he is diagnosed with cancer.

Carry on Doctor – The 15th in the series of Carry On films to be made and the second in the series to have a medical theme (after Carry on Nurse). Tells the tale of Francis Bigger (Frankie Howerd), a charlatan faith healer convinced that “mind over matter” is more effective than medical treatment, and his experiences with various medics.

The study, by Tulane and Thomas Jefferson universities and published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, found that students who devoted more time to the humanities during medical school had significantly higher levels of positive physician attributes like empathy, tolerance of ambiguity, wisdom and emotional intelligence while at the same time reporting lower levels of adverse traits like burnout.

“Wisdom might very well be the single trait that encompasses all of those other traits which define a well-rounded doctor: empathy, openness to possibilities, emotional resilience, mindfulness, humility, altruism, a knack for learning from life, plus a cathartic sense of humor,” the paper states. “Yet, wisdom is not a focus of today’s medical education, which concentrates primarily on information and knowledge.”

Senior author Professor Marc Kahn, from Tulane University School of Medicine, said: “The humanities have often been pushed to the side in medical school curricula, but our data suggests that exposure to the arts are linked to important personal qualities for future physicians. This is the first study to show this type of correlation.”

Co-author Salvatore Mangione, Associate Professor of Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University, said: “The fields of art and medicine have been diverging for the last 100 years. Our findings present a strong case for bringing the left and the right brains back together – for the health of the patient and the physician.”



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