An Integrated Humanities–Social Sciences Course in Health Sciences Education: Its Proposed Design, Effectiveness and Associated Factors

Abstract

BackgroundPrevious research has not provided enough direction regarding effective content design of courses integrating humanities and social sciences in medical and dental education This study aims at exploring how an Integrated Medical/Dental Humanities–Social Medicine/Dentistry course can be designed; how effective it can be in terms of students’ growth in knowledge, attitudes, skills, and aspirations; and what can be associated factors. MethodsThe course was designed by distilling commonalities in the international standards for medical/dental education proposed by seven major health organizations. This analysis resulted in a curriculum covering eight major topics (history; professionalism; communication; ethics; management; policy; insurance; law; and research methodology). During the 2017 calendar year, data was collected and statistically analyzed from 68 third-year pre-doctoral students enrolled in the resulting MDHS 13-week course. ResultsParticipants showed growth in skills, aspirations, knowledge, and attitudes, with the greatest change occurring in skills, then aspirations, knowledge, and attitude. However, knowledge growth was the only variable significantly related to student achievement of course objectives ( β = 0.635, t (63) = 3.394, p = 0.001). The topics that students perceived as most critical were insurance, policy, management, and law. Perceived importance of research was the most common and was significantly related to all types of learning outcomes (For knowledge, β =0.213, t (63) = 2.203, p = 0.031; for attitudes, β = 0.784, t (63) = 10.257, p = 0.000; for skills, β = 0.769, t (63) = 9.772, p = 0.000; and aspirations β = 0.639, t (63) = 7.595, p = 0.000). ConclusionsThis study proposed a framework for a humanities-social sciences education for health sciences education, and analyzed its implementation. The empirical evaluation of its effectiveness and factors related to successful outcomes found that students perceived gains in their knowledge, attitudes, skills, and aspirations for humanistic and social aspects of dentistry/medicine, and that recognized importance of research was associate with the greatest growth in all four areas of learning outcomes. This study hopes to contribute to the improved design of integrated humanities–social sciences courses.