Humanities Careers | Distance Learning Systems (DLSI)

Humanities And The Nursing Profession

The study of Humanities may not come as an integral subject to a nursing student. At the outset, it doesn’t cater at all to what nursing is all about. It is only one of those minor subjects that a nursing student has to go through before graduation.

But delving deeper into it, a nursing student may soon find out that the inclusion of Humanities in the curriculum has its own function.

Humanities is the study of human culture. It covers a whole range of topics from history, communication, law, and even anthropology. It has found its way into the nursing field so that nurses will be able to understand why certain people react to certain situations.

That is that inherent use of Humanities in a nursing course. When a nurse could surmise how his patient viewed his illness or how he accepted his own diagnosis, that nurse has his study of human culture functioning within the confines of nursing. It might be just a prerequisite to a nursing degree, but because of its all-encompassing nature, the subject will enable aspiring nurses to get by the conventions of nursing, especially when faced with important decisions.

As in the case of a patient’s history, which include his medical condition in the past. If a nurse could see some patterns in the past in relation to his present illness, then that nurse has done his job quite well. So, the study of Humanities has its own reason for being in the nursing curriculum. It has found its calling in there by helping neophyte nurses, especially when they are faced with medical issues, and laying the predicate for a much more comprehensive diagnosis. Humanities are no longer an ornament in a particular course, it is also helping nurses to become well-rounded medical specialists.

The Effects of Humanities to the Students

According to the dictionary, Humanities are academic disciplines that study human culture. The humanities use methods that are primarily critical, or speculative, and have a significant historical element as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences. The basic understanding of the word humanities is the study of how human being live here on earth. However, if we look at deeply the significant things that we need to know and understand, it is how the human being lives on earth right from the very beginning of our existence.

Many has already changed and many things have evolved. The way of living from the past is totally different in the present. Nevertheless, the things that happened in the past have a connection in our present. Therefore, humanities can be described as the study of how people process and document the human experience. How does studying humanities affect the students? It has a big impact when we study humanities; it helps us know the world and it opens up our mind to appreciate the beauty of creation and the magnificence of the world. It helps us understand others through their languages, histories and cultures. It helps us develop our creativity and it helps us know the reason about being human. Most of all, it helps us realize the value of human life.

However, only a few of our generation today can appreciate the beauty of the ancient arts and the classical music. That is the dilemma that is being faced by our educators today. Ancient arts, cultures and philosophy are the foundation of all the different aspects of our life and we can only learn these things by looking back to our past experiences and learn from it. Thus, it is very significant to the student to study humanities to learn the different walks of life.

The Significance of Humanities in Nursing

Humanities is the study of human culture. The humanities include human language (ancient or modern), history, literature, law, religion, philosophy and music. Scholars in humanities are commonly called humanists. A lot of schools and universities offer humanities classes consisting of English literature, arts, and global studies. Nursing education can be counted as one. Thus, nursing students ask how important is humanities to their chosen profession.

Nursing is often defined as both an art and science, but humanities have been hesitatingly been studied in the nursing curricula. However, outbreaks of interest in what is called the “nursing humanities” have become obvious. For instance, literary works are rich sources of not only of information, but illumination as well. The study of art, included in the humanities, can make an important contribution to a nurses’ various ways of knowing what is factual. There are also other complementary ways of knowing like ethical and aesthetical, both included in humanities.

Arts and literature give a meaningful learning experience for nursing students. With their nature, students are encouraged to make discussions made up of different interpretations. This kind of interaction allows participants to learn in ways that call forth new ways of thinking.

There are numerous works of literature and arts that provide rich food for the spirit. Also, it gives insight into the nurse-patient relationship and into an individual’s condition. Good literature enhances language concepts, words, and vision of human existence. To have a pool of vocabulary is needed to support a patient care. Today, we are suffering from a scarcity in vocabulary which cannot support appropriate discussions of the moral problems and crises that confront humans.

This confronts the relevance of the humanities to nursing. The concepts included in the said study can reflect upon nursing practitioners and education.

Humanities and Medicine

Medical humanities is an interdisciplinary field of medicine consisting of the humanities, social sciences and the arts. When we say humanities, it involves different studies like the literature, religion, ethics, philosophy, and history. Social sciences, on the other hand, involve cultural studies, psychology, anthropology, sociology, health, and geography. While the arts include theater, literature, film as well as visual arts. These subjects are used to determine the application and relation of specific factors in health and medicine.

Medical humanities is also understood to be an interdisciplinary, and increasingly international undertaking that pulls on the innovative and intellectual skills of diverse disciplines, including literature, art, creative writing, drama, film, music, philosophy, ethical making decisions, anthropology, and history, in pursuit of medical educational goals. This approach to medicine is a wider and generalized view on how individuals are affected by many elements surrounding us.

The health care system recognizes the value of the humanities in preparing health care professionals to tackle the learning and practice of medicine. The interdisciplinary humanities educate students to check out the historical, linguistic, cultural and aesthetic contexts in which we live. It also allows students to discover and attend more fully to the lasting question of what it is to be human and think deeply and critically and react successfully to the complex situations by which we find ourselves.

The intellectual practices of the humanities, along with the expertise in creating a capstone research and studies that deals with the intersection of the humanities and medicine, have the potential to affect students in many ways that will increase their future performance as physicians managing and reaching patients drawn from across different life circumstances and contexts.

The Importance of Humanities in Nursing

When we talk about humanities, we think about it as a branch of science that deals with human nature, but does it have something to do with nursing? This subject is a part of the curriculum of a nursing course as a minor subject or as an elective. It aims to expose the students to a different part of human beings. It gives an idea how people think, react and take action in certain situations they are involved.

The geniuses of ancient Greece first used the liberal arts to educate their people. They used poetry, paintings, debates etc to make people enhance their understanding, gain new insights and do critical thinking. Through the study of the humanities, we are able to think creatively, think before acting and apprehend situations.

As a nurse, it is important to gain some knowledge about people. They must be able to have a concrete understanding on how the patients feel about themselves and their condition. The more a nurse understands his or her patient, the more he or she can improve the services, use the proper treatment and approach.

Using the human experience, it will provide us with the knowledge about human nature. The works of the humanities scholars in the past have given us understanding of different cultures, how people develop fear, happiness or loneliness, and the proper approaches. Nursing students must learn this to use humanities in their daily shift. The more a nurse understands the patient, the more efficient they become.

By studying popular literature, nurses are able to know and appreciate life experiences. It will help them in attaining awareness and sensitivity towards the many physical and psychological aspects of an individual’s responses to health, illness and hospitalization. Humanities advertise affection from the hurt and discomfort of the disease. It is recognized as a highly effective teaching tool in a comprehensive program for college students of nursing.

Humanities Will Endure

Pay attention to the serious talk around universities, read op-eds and publications and you might think the humanities were in greater risk than the earth’s environment. In fact, despite the overheated stated claims, the humanities are not at death’s door. Modern demands will more likely force them into a new shape, and eventually a healthier one. That claim might seem unusual. The percentage of scholars specializing in the humanities has sunk to an all-time low. Learners have turned their backs on art history and literary works in support of studies like bookkeeping and medical, that leads straight to jobs. Governors like Florida’s Rick Scott have proved helpful to undercut areas of study not tuned carefully to employment. President Obama wants education to stress technology, science, engineering and arithmetic. Resources for disciplines in professions like history and linguistics are drying up. The legislature has already reduced the budget of the National Endowment for the Humanities and now Rep. Paul Ryan wants to destroy it.

Analysts of higher education paint a more uncertain image. How many years ago you start counting either degrees or research dollars, determines how depressing the humanities figures look. And with more and more people in America going to college only to qualify themselves for work, most time-honored areas of study have taken a hit, not just the humanities. But even at a conventional, top level organization like Stanford, degrees in humanities professions have dropped so low as to alert teachers into unmatched missionary initiatives.

Whatever precise form changes takes, teachers and their learners are likely to find that the humanities amount to more than a set of separated professions, each stuck on its own island. Ordinary readers might find learned research in art, history and literary works regularly published in language available to them, even released in general-interest publications, as it usually was before 1850. Even political figures may look for the value of erudition efforts. Today’s many humanities jointly form the newest edition of a millennia-long European custom of query into language and its products: inquiry, that is, into worlds that humans have created for themselves and expressed in words. That endeavor will not vanish, even when the present humanities disciplines do.