MINOR IN HEALTH HUMANITIES AND THE MEDICAL ARTS

The HHMA minor aligns with the call of St Augustine to “Become what you are not yet” by providing students with the opportunity to develop the tools and skills they will need as healthcare professionals to care for the whole patient—critical thinking, effective communication, empathetic imagination and engaged compassionate caregiving. Disciplines such as literature, philosophy, performance studies, theology and the visual arts offer students unique opportunities to explore the meaning of health, illness, death and suffering in the context of the unique relationship between patient and healthcare professional.

In addition to frequent faculty-student contact both in and out of the classroom, a distinctive feature of the HHMA minor is the opportunity to develop a sense of connection and fellowship with those who are already practicing healthcare professionals, especially with our Villanova healthcare alumni. Healthcare professionals, physicians and nurses especially, constitute a moral community, bound together by the goals of medicine and the oaths they take. Any course of study designed to prepare students for their future as healthcare professionals must include learning in a community bound together in common cause for the common good, in keeping with St. Augustine’s vision of learning which is “as a community ethos governed by love.”

The minor in Health Humanities and the Medical Arts is available to all students in the University and is particularly valuable for those students planning to pursue graduate studies or employment in the medical field or the healthcare industry more broadly. Students take two required classes and three electives, including an optional opportunity at the advanced level for independent study with a faculty member and clinical program affiliate (e.g., physician or nurse practitioner).