Medicine and the Arts: Humanising Healthcare

I LOVED this course and its interdisciplinary approach.

The only thing that I think is lacking is non-academic sources and more perspectives from patients and people.

I think there were brief mentions where you do (like the perspective of the kids for instance) and I recognise that there is only so much you can encompass in a few weeks when regarding an interdisciplinary approach. I realise you can only really touch the surface on some topics.

However, I see it many times that academic and western methodologies are put on a pedestal and are hierarchically seen as the superior way of viewing medicine (or even art). I know that the course takes place in South Africa but the resources and the writings follow an Eurocentric, anglo, western rules and academia.

For instance, how do people from different educational backgrounds and financial classes manifest or express illness? How do they share the knowledge in regard to medicine?

How do healers and alternative medical practices help us understand patients and also contribute to science and medicine? How do different intersections of oppression influence how the person receives and deals with health?

I don't mean bring this people in in a tokenising way, but I think it is important to include perspectives of people who do not have the vernacular of someone who is in academia. I think that the artists kind of breakthrough with some of biomedical language but it is still clear that most, if not all of them, have some form of higher level of education. This is visible in the way they verbally articulate their art.

This is a criticism that I have not only for this course but most of my courses and studies, which have mostly been in Europe.

I also think that this would benefit the research of medicine and arts, since it may tend to fall into this technical and inaccessible field. Ending up only being reserved for the (usually white) elite. This would also dismantle and tackle hierarchies of who is the giver and receiver of information, when it could just be more of an exchange of information.

In any case, I want to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this course. It is one of the only ones which actually kept me going and I actually finished. I also learned a lot from other fields which I was not so familiarised with and it deepened my knowledge on how labels are not restrictive. That art is not only made for arts sake and actually gains a lot from science and vice-versa. These different fields or approaches have a lot to learn form each other. Thank you for creating this course!

This is exactly the kind of course that I've been looking for quite some time, and I'm glad to have found it with the help of the learning platform-'Futurelearn'. Since I'm doing a different degree altogether, I took this course out of pure interest and in understanding about the healthcare systems, and I should say quite honestly that it didn't disappoint- not at all, and it was a wonderful experience. The course added fresh new perspectives and citations from various disciplines, which ultimately emphasized on moving from the 'modernized' way of viewing the healthcare to a post-modern approach- wherein we integrate what each and every discipline offers us in a holistic manner. That being said, I loved the assignment settings, and the forums were very interactive and engaging. The instructors have done a very neat job of organizing the ideas and I'm glad that I came across such an insightful course.

A new subject and approach for me. Very interesting and I hope the combination of the arts with conventional medical care as part of the treatment of long-term illness becomes widespread. I was especially interested because the course was presented by U. of Cape Town. I spent several years living and teaching in two other African countries - which I loved. I can appreciate the difficulties for medical staff in looking after patients in poor societies, whether in towns or from isolated rural communities.

Some elements of the content I found more interesting and convincing than others. I thought the practical application of arts theory and practice was useful to patients and worthwhile. Some of what we saw was a bit self-indulgent perhaps. And of course we were overtaken by events- Just as I approached the end of the course the world woke up to the seriousness of coronavirus and sadly South Africa and all of us are now faced with threat and a completely alien, new way of life.

Doctors in Cape Town and everywhere else are now working heroically and we thank them.

I would consider this course a gift for life in the sense of content and how thought provoking it is .
I learnt a great deal about South Africa and its unique challenges and was mightily impressed by the commitment of the speakers on this course and their understanding and passion to use limited resources in the best way possible and to marvel at adaptive innovation by people helping others .
What could have been sad , morbid and hopeless situations are instead seen as battles being won albeit slowly in some instances , but the effort to understand the limitations and to overcome are so poignant .
Medical humanities adds greater dimensions to healthcare , no one is just a body or an illness , they are being treated as human , whole beings with human needs , feelings , needing love , understanding and help to get better or relinquish life gently and with dignity .
The course is six weeks , but the learning from it will last a lifetime .

I found this a really good course. The approach is exciting, and is different from traditional approaches to medicine. It gives you a different way of seeing an area that we think we know. I have taken quite a lot of MOOCs, mainly free ones, as I am at the stage of my life where certificates carry no importance. Some free courses prohibit access to some areas, like assessment. Some allow limited access, with peer assessment taking the place of paid-for marking of assessment. Some allow access, but require you to undertake some crowd-sourced task (invariably fascinating). In this course, the only thing the UCT gets back from us is discussion about the topics raised in the course. I appreciate the value the course organisers place on our comments.

This a beautifully structured course whereyou really feel you have been on a learning journey. I was fearful that this might be a course heavily dominated by the medical with just some arts stuff added in as "add ons", but no, it truly fulfils its aim of interdisciplinarity. There is no dominant perspective - all come together as an integrated, while diverse whole. The speakers came from very varied backgrounds and presented such different and interesting perspectives while retaining always that link to the overall aim of interdisciplinarity. There is also a "live" moderator which I think always is a plus in these courses. The course offered an incredibly rich palette with lots of references one can follow up. I just loved everything about it, especially the humanity of our teachers. This has certainly been one of the best online courses I have ever done.

This is an amazing course that explores 6 different areas within medicine and how the humanities and the Arts interacts or can affect it. While there are two main leaders of the course, they utilize many doctors, artists, and professors to detail each area. There are also videos with live performances, slide shows, etc. As someone who advocates for accessible education, this course gives visual, audio and print continually. Definitely a plus.
I would recommend anyone writing curriculum for medical students to take this course as well as medical students themselves. That doesn't exclude the general public. The course is presented as very accessible in understanding. I would just like to see more graduating doctors be able to have a more through understanding of their patients, like the doctors I have met who were trained overseas.
Definitely a course worth taking.