A Systematic Review of the Role of Medical Humanities in Fostering Medical Doctor Professionalism

Nisa Amaliya Variansyah

doi:10.55606/ijhs.v6i2.7654

Authors

Nisa Amaliya Variansyah Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Ampel Surabaya

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.55606/ijhs.v6i2.7654

Keywords:

Medical Doctor Professionalism, Medical Education, Medical Humanities, Narrative Medicine, Professional Identity Formation

Abstract

The rapid advancement of healthcare technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) has transformed medical practice by improving diagnostic accuracy, clinical decision-making, and healthcare efficiency. However, these developments have also raised concerns regarding the potential decline of humanistic values, empathy, ethical reasoning, and patient-centered care among future medical doctors. Medical humanities has emerged as an interdisciplinary educational approach that integrates ethics, philosophy, literature, history, arts, and narrative medicine to strengthen professionalism and humanistic competencies in medical education. This study aimed to systematically synthesize the existing evidence regarding the role of medical humanities in fostering medical doctor professionalism and to identify effective educational approaches applicable in the AI era. A systematic review was conducted following the PRISMA 2020 guidelines through comprehensive literature searches in major scientific databases. Eligible studies were selected based on predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria, followed by quality assessment, data extraction, and narrative thematic synthesis. The findings consistently demonstrate that medical humanities positively contributes to the development of empathy, communication skills, ethical decision-making, reflective capacity, and professional identity formation among medical students and medical doctors. Educational strategies such as narrative medicine, reflective writing, visual arts, literature-based learning, and ethics discussions were identified as effective interventions for strengthening professionalism. Despite methodological heterogeneity across studies, the overall evidence supports the longitudinal integration of medical humanities into competency-based medical curricula. This review concludes that medical humanities plays a fundamental role in preparing future medical doctors who are capable of utilizing AI while maintaining professionalism, ethical integrity, compassion, and patient-centered care in contemporary healthcare.

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