Faculty of Medicine of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Humanities in Medicine

The Technion (Israel Institute of Technology), founded in 1924, has been attempting for almost three decades to better integrate the humanities into their medical school curriculum. This has been quite a challenge because Technion is very science and technology oriented, originally established for students studying engineering and architecture. The six-year baccalaureate-MD program began in 1974 and the first two years of study were identical to those of engineering students. It was only in the fourth-year course Introduction to Clinical Medicine that medical students were introduced to the humane side of medicine. The late 1970s saw several developments at Technion towards building humanities into the medical school curriculum. The Psychosocial Aspects of Medicine, an elective course for first- and second-year students, was introduced and taught in small groups by teams of physicians and medical sociologists. Unfortunately, the course was discontinued for lack of funds and teaching personnel when popular demand called for expanding the course to include all students. Also around this same time, two internal medicine faculty members began introducing medical professionalism and medical ethics via “trigger films” during the Introduction to Clinical Medicine course--an informal “through the back door” inclusion.1,2 The same physicians began to lobby for the inclusion of medical ethics, humanities, and behavioral sciences in the curriculum, but it wasn’t until 1993 with the appointment of a dean with a humanities background that the attitude of the faculty towards the humanities began to change. A multidisciplinary Forum in Medical Ethics was established and is still active, meeting regularly on a monthly basis to discuss predetermined topics that deal with the applicability of philosophical principles as well as specific rulings (the law) to local constraints such as culture and religion.3 With the new dean’s support, an annual patient-physician relationship conference was initiated, an ethicist-philosopher was appointed as research associate, and an elective medical ethics course for third-year medical students was introduced. In 1994 the elective course Literature and Medicine, which was based on texts and plays and taught by faculty from the Department of Comparative Literature, was offered. Almost half of the third-year class opted for this course, which unfortunately was discontinued in its second year, as no one replaced the deceased lecturer. In 1997, a three-day “Vision and Mission” retreat attended by the entire faculty, resulted in a curriculum revolution. A thread of behavioral sciences/humanities courses throughout the six years of studies was introduced. Preclinical core courses Exposure to the Medical System and Environment, Life Cycle, and Anthropology were initiated. The Medical Ethics and Law course became part of the third-year core curriculum. All the retreat initiatives are in various stages of implementation and a future retreat is needed to determine what has been achieved, what needs to be achieved, and what new issues have arisen since 1997. An annual Medicine and the Holocaust Conference for students and faculty was inaugurated in 2002, and this academic year we established a multidisciplinary Literature and Medicine Forum, which meets regularly once a month. The 20 to 30 members prepare for each meeting by reading predistributed texts, and the meetings are devoted to discussing how medicine and medical doctors are reflected in literature. We hope that the Literature and Medicine Forum will lead to establishment of a course in literature and medicine for our medical students, the way that the Forum in Medical Ethics led to the core course Medical Ethics. In a science- and technology-oriented faculty of medicine such as ours, we feel that it is extremely important to continue to make efforts to include medical humanities in the curriculum. Faculty of Medicine of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology Length of medical school program: Six years plus one year of rotating internship. Level of education required for admission: High school degree, although some students enter after obtaining BSc degrees. Average number of students who matriculate each year: 70-80. Average number of students who graduate each year: 70-80. Cost of medical education per student: 11,000 ILS (2,564 USD) per year, 66,000 ILS (15,390 USD) total. Number of medical schools in Israel: Four.