Beyond empathy: a qualitative exploration of arts and humanities in pre-professional (baccalaureate) health education

For nearly four decades, researchers have explored the integration of arts and humanities content into health professions education (HPE). However, enduring controversies regarding the purpose, efficacy, and implementation of humanities initiatives suggest that the timing and context of trainees’ exposure to such content is a key, but seldom considered, factor. To better understand the affordances of introducing humanities-based health curriculum prior to the HPE admissions gateway, we conducted a qualitative instrumental case study with participants from Canada’s first Health Humanities baccalaureate program. Fully anonymized transcripts from semi-structured interviews (n = 11) and focus groups (n = 14) underwent an open-coding procedure for thematic narrative analysis to reveal three major temporal domains of described experience (i.e., prior to, during, and following their participation in a 12-week semester-long “Introduction to Health Humanities” course). Our findings demonstrate that perceptions of arts- and humanities content in health education are generated well in advance of HPE admission. Among other findings, we define a new concept—epistemological multicompetence—to describe participants’ emergent capability to toggle between (and advocate for the role of) multiple disciplines, arts and humanities particularly, in health-related teaching and learning at the pre-professional level. Improved coordination of baccalaureate and HPE curricula may therefore enhance the development of capabilities associated with arts and humanities, including: epistemological multicompetence, aesthetic sensibility, and other sought-after qualities in HPE candidates. In conclusion, attending to the pre-professional admissions gateway presents a new, capabilities-driven approach to enhancing both the implementation and critical understanding of arts and humanities’ purpose, role, and effects across the “life course” of health professions education.