The Health, Arts and Humanities Program continues to engage a growing community of scholars in the arts, humanities and clinical disciplines across the University of Toronto and beyond to advance a deeper understanding of health, illness, suffering, disability and the provision of healthcare.
Ars Medica: Ars Medica is a biannual literary journal, started in 2004, that explores the interface between the arts and healing, and examines what makes medicine an art. Ars Medicaremains the only medical literary journal in Canada, and one of a handful of such journals in the world, in the rapidly developing international field of the humanities in healthcare.
Training and Education:
The Health Arts & Humanities Program has been awarded EDU-D (Extra-Departmental Unit) status within the UofT Faculty of Medicine in recognition of its unique and important contribution to the academic community.
A compelling literature demonstrates that physicians, nurses and other healthcare professionals who gain exposure to humanities and arts-based learning improve their capacity to think critically and bring enhanced sensitivity, curiosity and creativity to their work with patients. This in turn can lead to better self-care, personal balance and greater career satisfaction. One of the goals of this Division is to expose trainees and faculty from numerous clinical disciplines to the role of arts and humanities-based learning and research, reflective capacity and narrative competence.
The HAH Program is actively involved in consulting to the Undergraduate Portfolio Course, and has created a comprehensive companion humanities curriculum and other undergraduate initiatives to enhance learners’ reflective capacity and narrative competence. The centralized Reflective Practice post-graduate psychiatry course invites residents to reflect on their practice utilizing a diversity of arts-based methods.
