Health Care Humanities

The Health Care Humanities educational pathway has been offered since September 2022 and is open to all students who have completed a Bachelor’s programme either at Radboud University or another university. In this educational pathway, students from different faculties learn to look at health care in the Netherlands from different perspectives, and to discuss improvements.

The academic disciplines of history, anthropology/sociology, language & communication/art, theology/religion studies and philosophy/ethics play a central role. This means that you will gain a broad orientation to the scientific knowledge and research surrounding this important field. Taking a qualified critical approach that complements any existing Master’s programme, you can then go on to work in health care or those areas that are linked to the health care sector.

What is Health Care Humanities?

Health Care Humanities is an interdisciplinary field of study. It combines knowledge and insights from the medical and biomedical sciences with those from the humanities. This includes ethics, communication, philosophy, religion, art and history. This gives you a better understanding of issues and experiences surrounding illness, health, ability/disability, physicality, identity and diversity in the context of the health care sector. On this basis, we can discover new solutions and broader opportunities for collaboration.

Why Health Care Humanities?

Is the Dutch health care sector really accessible to everyone in the Netherlands? Should all medical innovations be supported? Why do so many people find it so hard to maintain a healthy lifestyle? Can visual art, music or literature have a healing effect on patients? How do people deal with death and have things always been this way?

Questions like these are not easily answered. They focus on the role that health and the health care sector play in our society and how illness and health are perceived by people. The basic idea in Health Care Humanities is that many complex health care questions and problems benefit from a multidisciplinary approach, which in addition to a biomedical perspective, also involves socio-cultural and humanities perspectives.

Social relevance

Society has a growing need for graduates who take a broad and critical view. This group includes health care professionals who continue to develop through collaboration with other academic disciplines. And it also includes policy officers and researchers who have a sound understanding of the health care domain and the people who work within this sector. They are able to apply their study-specific knowledge of such areas as culture, religion, philosophy and ethics, history, and language and imagery.

Useful for students from different disciplines

As a Medical student or a Biomedical Sciences student, you will learn that in addition to a biomedical understanding of the relationship between the doctor/researcher and patient, the human-human relationship is just as important for individualistic and humane care and research.

As a Social Sciences and Humanities student, you will learn about the social domains of the health care sector and what the added value of your own academic discipline is within both health care as a system as well as directly in health care provision.

But Health Care Humanities is also open to students from other fields! If you are a student with a different disciplinary background, you will gain a broad perspective of the health care sector and learn to bridge the gap between your newly acquired knowledge and the knowledge from your own discipline.

Modules

The Health Care Humanities educational pathway consists of five modules, which each have a study load of 5 ECs. These can be taken separately with any completed Bachelor’s programme. Each module focuses on a health care issue. This issue is examined from within different academic disciplines such as history, anthropology and sociology, language, communication and art, theology and religious studies, philosophy and ethics, and medical and biomedical sciences.

After following a module, students can apply for a certificate of completion at the STIP of the faculty at which the module was given.

What our students are saying

It’s an interesting addition to clinical placement, which at this point in time, actually provides one-sided medical scientific insights into illness and health. I feel that the study has been missing the social emphasis for some time - Faculty of Medical Sciences student

It’s fantastic that this field of study is finally being offered!! Registration for this field of study needs to be fairly straightforward (especially in terms of approval, motivation, sufficient study credits, which can sometimes be quite complex when you want to take a course at another faculty...) - Faculty of Arts student

Registration

Health Care Humanities is open to anyone who has completed a Bachelor’s programme. Registration procedures may vary. Please see below for more information about how you can register to participate in one or more of the Health Care Humanities modules!

Current and prospective Master’s students

If you are a Master’s student at Radboud University, you can register via Osiris for one or more modules. The modules that you take will subsequently appear as electives on your qualification or diploma supplement (in any case, this applies to students from the Faculty of Arts, the Faculty of Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies and the Faculty of Medical Sciences). Medical Master’s students can take one or more modules and use them to fill in their free elective space (elective clinical placement episodes). Other Master’s courses with a study load of up to 12 ECs can also be taken instead of elective clinical placements (application can be made through the Examination Board).

Waitlisted students

If you are a medical student who has completed their Bachelor’s programme and you are waiting to begin your Master’s programme, you will need to send an email to the Student Information Desk first (stip [at] radboudumc.nl). You will then be registered as a contract student. You will subsequently need to send an email to the Health Care Humanities Coordinator. They will liaise with System Administration to ensure that you are registered for your chosen modules. You will not need to pay tuition fees for these modules.

External student

If you are a Master’s student at another university and you would like to take one or more modules, you will need to send an email to the Student Information Desk first (stip [at] radboudumc.nl). You will then be registered as an external contract student. This means that you will be able to register via Osiris for one or more modules. You will pay a fee for each module.
 

Contact

Dr Gert Olthuis

The Health Care Humanities educational pathway is a collaboration between the Faculty of Medical Sciences, the Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies.