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
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The Health Sciences Library has create a new Medical Humanities Collection locate in the Foyer of their library.
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:
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
COVID-19 Myths and misinformation - University of Toronto
Medline
Fiabilité de l'information : Évaluer le contenu en ligne (in French)
Evaluating clinical guidelines: you can use one of these tools.
Evaluating the sources of Grey Literature, two tests are commonly used:
Myths ? Misinformation ?? Disinformation ?
World Health Organization
COVID-19 Pandemic Wikipedia page
COVID-19 Myths and misinformation - University of Toronto
Online Health Information Aid - McGill University
COVID19MisInfo.org Portal
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