The University of Southampton Faculty of Medicine looks forward to hosting the Association for Medical Humanities Annual Conference from 7th – 9th July 2014. The Faculty uniquely offers medical humanities options for all its undergraduate students in year 1 as a vehicle for the exploration of patients’ perspectives and experiences through a creative process.
This eleventh conference is the first time Southampton has hosted the Association’s annual conference and will be an opportunity for further interdisciplinary discussion of medical humanities within the context of medical education and patient care after the Francis report.
The theme of the conference is ‘The Art of Compassion’ which aims to explore and share the extent to which medical humanities can generate understanding and maximise its potential to transform medical practice. It is hoped that this conference will contribute to the current debate around compassion and the development of compassionate practice in healthcare.
Diverse speakers and workshops will enable the conference to consider the nature of compassion from historical, philosophical, cultural and global perspectives as well as probe current issues such as, whether compassion can be taught or learned; how possible or desirable it is to incentivise compassion in a healthcare system and how the challenges of sustaining compassion can be met.
Proposals: We welcome presentations that consider any aspect of medical humanities and compassion. Please submit your name, paper title and abstract of up to 300 words by 28 February 2014 here.
Registration for the conference is available from 3rd March here.