Class Of 2024
“The Ideal Doctor: The Evolution of Holism in Medical School Requirements and Its Impact on the Views of an ‘Ideal’ Medical Student: a 1950 – Present Study”
How did you come to this work, and what resonated with you as you conducted your research?
My research focuses on how ideas about holism changed within medical education, specifically among prospective medical students from the 1950s to the present. The first part of my project involved analyzing matriculation requirements in medical school announcements, catalogs, and bulletins collected from 14 medical school archives across the United States. The second part of my project involved analyzing archival sources pertaining to the MCAT and use of non-cognitive assessments collected from the AAMC Mary H. Littlemeyer Archives and tracking the holistic shifts in the different versions and uses across the mid 20th century to the present. I became extremely interested in the holistic changes being adapted by many medical schools and the AAMC, outlining the core competencies for a successful medical student. Specifically, it was the recent piloting of the CASPER exam and PREview being used for medical school admissions that piqued my interest in how and why medical organizations and academic medical institutions used the word “holistic.” While diving deeper into my source material, I realized just how crucial creating whole medical students and future physicians are as this is essential in treating the whole patient, embodying pillars like cultural competency, interpersonal competency, humility, etc. Being an MSH and Spanish double major, my research has further solidified my understanding and views on the importance of humanities in medicine, creating a synergistic blend that transforms the way medical students and future physicians practice wholeness in their patient interactions and dialogues.
Do you plan on continuing this work? If so, in what way?
In terms of next steps for this senior thesis, I hope to build on the second part of my project in graduate school, putting more emphasis on the evolution of holism in the medical curriculum, specifically in the required courses for medical students across the US. My overall vision for this project is to track the evolution of holism within the path of medicine, with part one focusing on the requirements for medical school, part two focusing on the changes in the medical school courses required for medical students, and part three being changes made to the residency curriculum as seen from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). While this does seem like quite the ambition, I am confident that my passion for the medical humanities and history of medical education can propel me forward into my future endeavors as a researcher and future physician.