Healthcare Management and the Humanities: An Invitation to Dialogue

Abstract

Throughout the fields of medicine and organization studies, there are growing indications of the value of the humanities for enriching scholarship, education, and practice. However, the field of healthcare management has yet to consider the promise of the humanities for illuminating its particular domain. This perspective paper explores how the humanities might begin to play a role in healthcare management by focusing on three broad areas: (1) understanding the lived experiences of management, (2) offsetting the “tyranny of metrics”, and (3) confronting rather than avoiding anxiety. While preliminary in presentation, these areas are intended to facilitate wider consideration of the humanities in healthcare management and to encourage interdisciplinary dialogue. The paper also identifies actionable approaches that might be derived from such a dialogue, including substantiating critical healthcare management scholarship, collaborating with humanities educators to design novel curricula, proposing alternatives to unduly circumscribed performance targets and competency assessments, creating case studies of formative experiences of practicing healthcare managers, and advancing guidelines for better managing anxiety and its concomitant stress, burnout, and compassion fatigue in healthcare organizations. The paper concludes by discussing the potential risks of incorporating the humanities into healthcare management, while also offering a prospective synthesis from an interdisciplinary approach.

The Interplay of Profitability and Social Responsibility in Achieving Institutional Excellence: An Exploratory Study in Government and Private Hospitals in Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

“…The government has been very dedicated to improving healthcare infrastructure over the past few decades. As a result, there are now more hospitals, clinics, and specialized healthcare facilities across the country (Gerard, 2021). At the same time, societal expectations have changed significantly, with a greater focus on ethical awareness, community involvement, and social responsibility in the healthcare field (da Costa et al, 2022).…”