The first medical humanities programme in Turkey.

THE MEDICAL HUMANITIES: The arts and humanities have been considered a recreational activity related to the interests and talents of the doctor, rather than to their practice of medicine. GOOD MEDICAL PRACTICE COURSE: At Hacettepe University, the 'good medical practice course' was added to the curriculum in September 2004. The goals of this course are to help the students achieve the skills and attitudes of a good doctor and to become competent in caring for and communicating with patients. IMPLEMENTATION: As a part of the programme, in the first 3 years students prepared 526 projects concerned with medical humanities in the broad areas of 'medicine and art', 'medicine and history' and 'man and medicine'. They presented 72 of the projects as short communications at the Medical Humanities Congress and the remaining projects as posters. Each project was also to be prepared as a portfolio. PROGRAMME EVALUATION: At the end of the programme, a questionnaire was given to both the students and the tutors to evaluate the course. The part of the programme rated most difficult was the medical humanities section, according to 67.1% of the students. They commented that it took a great deal of time to research and prepare the projects. PROPOSED CHANGES: The new concept and the extra workload, in addition to new medical knowledge, confused all the students. We have made some changes to the programme and have decided to develop a number of new activities.
CONCLUSION: 'Medical humanities' is a new concept for almost all the students and the faculty; it needs to be well defined.