Medical school curricula, although traditionally and historically dominated by science, have generally accepted, appreciated, and welcomed the inclusion of literature over the past several decades. Recent concerns about medical professional formation have led to discussions about the specific role and contribution of literature and stories. In this article, we demonstrate how professionalism and the study of literature can be brought into relationship through critical and interrogative interactions based in the literary skill of close reading. Literature in medicine can question the (...) meaning of “professionalism” itself, thereby resisting standardization in favor of diversity method and of outcome. Literature can also actively engage learners with questions about the human condition, providing a larger context within which to consider professional identity formation. Our fundamental contention is that, within a medical education framework, literature is highly suited to assist learners in questioning conventional thinking and assumptions about various dimensions of professionalism. (shrink)

Our purpose has been to illuminate questions surrounding the use of literature in medical education, and to propose criteria for selecting literature which is more likely to evoke readers to reflect on their personal and professional selves. We have suggested that literature promoting vicariousness and vulnerability may validate readers' questions, insecurities, and beliefs insofar as readers are willing to engage with the text cognitively and phenomenologically. This we call reader responsibility. Crucial to nurturing this responsibility are medical educators 2- ducators (...) in any context, for that matter – who are vulnerable themselves, who puzzle outloud, who admit their own incompleteness. Together as learners, teachers and students may come to realize that it is, in the end, the artist whopresses upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power... seizes our lives, and which reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered. (shrink)