Medical Humanities

Medical humanities is an interdisciplinary field of humanities (literature, philosophy, ethics, history and religion), social science (anthropology, cultural studies, psychology, sociology), and the arts (literature, theater, film, and visual arts) and their application to medical education and practice. 

Medical humanities research is approached differently from the natural sciences, where data and hard evidence are required to draw conclusions. Because the human experience cannot be adequately captured by facts and figures alone, humanities research employs methods that are historical, interpretive, and analytical in nature.

Those engaged in humanities research pose questions about common assumptions, uncover new meanings in artistic works, or find new ways to understand cultural interactions. They are interested in raising questions and offering strong but tentative answers, not indisputable solutions.

The TMC Library Health Sciences Resource Center. (2015). Medical humanities. Retrieved from http://libguides.library.tmc.edu/humanities/home

Need a break ??  Looking for some music or video ??

Explore the new Virtual Care Package prepared by the Library

The Health Sciences Library has create a new Medical Humanities Collection locate in the Foyer of their library. 

• Contagion | IMDB | Rotten Tomatoes
• La grande séduction | IMDB | Rotten Tomatoes
• Outbreak | IMDB | Rotten Tomatoes
• Les Invasions Barbares | IMDB | Rotten Tomatoes
• Girl, Interrupted | IMDB | Rotten Tomatoes
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest | IMDB | Rotten Tomatoes
• Ce qu'il faut pour vivre | IMDB
• Rolling
• Wit | IMDB | Rotten Tomatoes

• History of Medicine:  Images from the NLM  History of Medicine

Brooklyn College

• Titre/Title: Ancient Medicine: The Classical Roots of the Medical Humanities
• Course material
• English
• Licence: CC BY

Finding trustworthy information

1)

Use our validated and evaluated resources such as our databases:  Medline,  CINAHL, Nursing and Allied Health Database , DynaMed, or our collections of e-books,

Consult our specialized research libguides, e.g. Medicine, Nursing, for databases and book collections. List of research libguides by specialties.

2)

Use the reputable resources available that cover different angles of health problems: 

• the public services: Federal government, provincial governments, municipal...
• the recognized associations or by health professionals 
• the official data, such as health statistics, or general stats

3)

If you find information on the Internet or through any resource and are in doubt, use the guides provided in the "Evaluating Sources and Resources" or "Verifying the Facts" box below to validate the information, facts or statements!

Good research !!

Assessing health care resources

Online Health Information Aid - McGill University

• Online Health Information Aid provides tips and resources on searching, evaluating, and using online health information. Please take a look on the section for COVID-19.
• COVID-19 : On this page dedicated to COVID-19, you will find selected resources for navigating and understanding the information related to the pandemic.

COVID-19 Myths and misinformation - University of Toronto

• Learn more on :  Fact / Fiction,  Misinformation,   How can I spot misinformation about the coronavirus and COVID-19... and more
• Explore the pages and documents proposed by the University of Toronto.

Medline 

• Evaluating Health Information : Tutorial
• Online health information - what can you trust?  See the list "MedlinePlus Evaluating Internet Health Information: Checklist"

Fiabilité de l'information : Évaluer le contenu en ligne (in French)

• Page de synthèse réalisée par les Bibliothèques des sciences de la santé, Université de Montréal: 1. Qualité et validité du contenu; 2.  Autorité de la source; 3. Mise à jour; 4. Facilité d'utilisation

Evaluating clinical guidelines: you can use one of these tools.

• From CADTH, Critical Appraisal of Clinical Practice Guidelines 
• "Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation (AGREE) ". For more information, check out their resources.

Evaluating the sources of Grey Literature, two tests are commonly used:

• The CRAAP Test : Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, Purpose
• The CARS checklist: Credibility, Accuracy, Reasonableness, Support

Myths ? Misinformation ??  Disinformation ?

• To learn more on Misinformation/disinformation, its impacts on research, see  the new libguide from uO :  COVID-19 Misinformation Toolkit

World Health Organization

• Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) advice for the public: Mythbusters
• Navigate in the list of topics

COVID-19 Pandemic Wikipedia page

• Misinformation related to the COVID-19 Pandemic

COVID-19 Myths and misinformation - University of Toronto

• Learn more on :  Fact / Fiction,  Misinformation,   How can I spot misinformation about the coronavirus and COVID-19... et plus 
• Explore the pages and documents proposed by the University of Toronto.

Online Health Information Aid - McGill University

• Online Health Information Aid provides tips and resources on searching, evaluating, and using online health information. Please take a look on the section for COVID-19.
• COVID-19 : On this page dedicated to COVID-19, you will find selected resources for navigating and understanding the information related to the pandemic.

COVID19MisInfo.org Portal

• Are These COVID-19 Claims True or False?  Consult the Portal !!  The COVID19MisInfo.org Portal is a rapid response project of the Ryerson Social Media Lab at Ted Rogers School of Management.

Here are some resources you can consult to better verify the quality of the information you have found :

This online guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. This guide is attributed to Marie-Cécile Domecq

If you have questions, or if you run into problems that the guide does not address, please e-mail Marie-Cécile Domecq at mdomecq@uottawa.ca