Medical humanities articles are an important, but often overlooked, form of healthcare publication. This category of work encompasses a broad array of article types that go beyond the typical definitions of academic scholarship. In addition to academic narrative writing, the medical humanities also include poetry, visual artwork, music, and many other formats of expression. These articles hold a special place in my heart because a medical humanities essay was one of my first articles ever published in a medical journal. Since then, I have published dozens of medical humanities articles and find that they are perhaps the single best way to foster connection with others in the increasingly complex world of medicine.
If you are interested in publishing your next medical humanities work, this article can help you find your creation a home.
Table of Contents
What are the Medical Humanities?
Medical humanities encompass a multidisciplinary field that integrates the arts, literature, philosophy, history, and social sciences into the realm of healthcare. For healthcare workers, engaging with medical humanities offers a unique opportunity to enhance patient care by fostering a deeper understanding of the human experience surrounding illness, suffering, and healing. By exploring narratives, artworks, and ethical considerations, medical humanities provide a platform for healthcare professionals to connect with each other and with patients on a more profound, human-centered level.
While it is difficult to generalize such a diverse and expansive area of work, medical humanities often use stories and other non-academic forms of expression to describe the emotional, psychological, and cultural dimensions of medicine that are ubiquitous in clinical settings but rarely discussed through formal media outlets. Literature and narrative essays allow healthcare professionals to explore universal themes through specific experiences in their work and their lives. Visual and performing art expresses complex emotions and perceptions beyond the confines of the written word. Even traditional academic writing plays a role in the medical humanities by exploring, analyzing, and contextualizing important discussions around moral, ethical, and historical issues within healthcare.
What is Narrative Medicine?
Narrative medicine embodies the art of listening and the science of understanding, offering healthcare professionals a transformative approach to patient care. At its core, narrative medicine acknowledges that every patient has a unique and multifaceted story that extends beyond their medical condition. By actively engaging with patients’ narratives—listening to their experiences, emotions, and perspectives—healthcare workers can forge stronger connections, gaining insights that lead to more personalized and effective care.
Through the lens of narrative medicine, healthcare providers become attuned to the nuances of illness, suffering, and recovery, fostering empathy and a deeper appreciation for the human dimensions of medicine. This approach not only enhances diagnostic accuracy but also nurtures a therapeutic alliance built on trust, respect, and shared understanding, ultimately contributing to better health outcomes and an enriched healthcare experience for both patients and clinicians.
Types of Medical Humanities Articles
Narrative and Personal Essays
These essays explore an experience through the personal, often first-person, perspective of the author. While they should connect to a larger universal theme or central truth, they explore these ideas through a traditional story arc. Authors describe scenes, characters, and actions as they occurred in real life and may or may not insert additional commentary or perspective along with the action of the story.
My essay “Say Goodnight” follows the actions of a particular evening and provides specific commentary on the meaning of these events to the author. Compare this to my essay “7 On, 7 Off,” which follows a much less traditional structure, but explores similar settings and themes. The essay “Vicious” by nurse Tim Cunningham was originally published in the medical humanities journal Intima and won the 2018 Compassion in Healthcare Essay Contest. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman is a great example of a full-length non-fiction book exploring medical themes through narrative writing.
Literature and Poetry
Literature, such as novels and short stories, are often the ideal lens to view the complex events that occur in the world of sickness and healing. Sometimes, fictional narratives offer a clearer view of the truth than a strict re-telling of true events. Through literary fictional works, authors can craft ideal plot lines and complex characters without violating the trust they share with real-life patients. Fiction also allows authors to maintain a high level of emotional honesty without the perception that they are commenting on their current or previous workplaces or colleagues.
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese is a highly-regarded novel set in a clinical environment. “Sisters of Mercy” by Joan Leegent is a short but powerful fictional story published by the literary journal Bellevue Review.
Poetry is an alternative form of written art used to express important ideas, emotions, and themes in medicine. Many medical humanities journals publish poetry and many non-medical literary journals welcome poetry with themes related to health, medicine, and illness. The poem “Bypass” by Benjamin Drum was published in Intima and won the 2013 Essay Contest. Famed writer Sylvia Plath also wrote poetry with healthcare themes, such as “Morning in the Hospital Solarium.”
Visual and Audio Artwork
Multimedia artwork allows healthcare professionals to break out of the constraints of the written word and express ideas through a variety of visual and audio media. Many medical humanities journals regularly publish artwork and music. “Healing Hands” is a beautiful example of visual artwork published in Intima. The journal also regularly publishes recorded collections of music.
General academic medical journals also publish artwork. These paintings created by nurses were published in American Journal of Nursing. The medical education journal Academic Medicine regularly publishes artwork created by healthcare professionals on its cover, shown below.
Historical Analysis
Historical analysis and perspectives are an important part of the medical humanities. By studying humanities issues of the past, we can pay tribute to pioneers in the field, confront tragedies and mistakes, and learn more about how we arrived in the present. Historical analysis can focus on a single event or issue, such as this analysis of a historical novel, or might look at the field holistically, such as this essay in the humanities journal Daedalus.
Ethical and Philosophical Exploration
Some medical humanities articles explore specific ethical or philosophical issues in contemporary artistic expression. These articles are at their best when they explore the intersection or art and the universal themes it represents. For example, this essay looks at issues related to HIV/AIDS through the lens of representation in the film, Philadelphia.
Medical Education and Student-related Material
Medical humanities often (and wisely) focus on healthcare trainees, their utilization of the arts in their education, and their experiences in the medical training process. My alma mater Yale famously utilizes trips to the local art museum to sharpen medical and PA students’ observation skills.
But student-centered medical humanities materials are much more expansive than that. These include materials written by students about their training experiences, explorations assigned to students as part of their training, and original research and analysis studying the effects of such assignments of student outcomes.
For example, this article examines medical student empathy by analyzing their blog posts about death. This qualitative analysis examines the outcomes of integrating medical humanities into a medical education curriculum. And this was my first published humanities essay, describing how my fellow students and I experienced the death of our pediatric patient.
Original Research Articles
Like any academic field, medical humanities utilizes qualitative and qualitative research to examine itself and the impact it has on the world. These studies take many forms but should always apply academic rigor and sound research methodologies to the broad array of medical humanities concepts.
For example, this study investigated whether a comic-drawing workshop could increase trainees’ willingness to share their experiences in stressful situations. It also included a qualitative analysis of the reasons participants do or do not share their most stressful experiences. Compare that to this feasibility study examining the efficacy and benefits of a narrative medicine intervention at an internal medicine residency. It utilized quantitative measurement tools such as the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI). Both studies use established methodologies to determine the efficacy of their medical humanities interventions.
Where Can You Publish Your Work In Medical Humanities?
Authors have many options when it comes to publishing their medical humanities work. These include general medical journals that publish medical humanities work, specialty journals dedicated exclusively to publishing medical humanities, and literary journals that accept work on many topics, including health, medicine, and illness.
General Medical Academic Journals
Many general medicine and clinical specialty journals also publish a wide array of humanities articles, including personal essays, narratives, and visual artwork. In these journals, you will find medical humanities articles alongside traditional academic articles such as case reports, clinical review articles, and clinical research. Publishing humanities articles in these journals is an excellent way to put your work in front of a broad audience that might not seek out or regularly read a dedicated humanities journal.
Examples of these journals include:
Academic Medicine: Owned by the American Academy of Medical Colleges (AAMC), this journal’s content focuses on medical student education and has a primary audience of medical school faculty; it typically leans very academic. However, it also publishes humanities articles related to these audiences and settings, including its cover art, as mentioned above. Ensure your humanities work is a good fit for this particular audience and scope before investing the time in a submission.
Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA): Owned by the American Medical Association (AMA), JAMA is a general medical journal with a broad scope. Even as it has grown in fame and spawned multiple specialty spinoff journals, the flagship JAMA publication publishes some humanities work alongside its more clinical and academic work. JAMA’s “Arts and Medicine,” “A Piece of My Mind,” and “Poetry” sections publish analytical essays, personal vignettes, and poetry, respectively.
Journal of the American Academy of PAs (JAAPA): Owned by the American Academy of Physician Associates (AAPA), this general medicine academic journal has a broad physician associate/physician assistant audience. Alongside the journal’s clinical articles and original research, JAAPA’s “Art of Medicine” section features award-winning humanities articles and personal essays. The journal also accepts humanities work in its “Mindful Practice” section and “Becoming a PA” section, which publishes work from students.
Journals Specializing in Medical Humanities
Many journals entirely focus on content related to the medical humanities. These journals may focus more heavily on 1) the academic study of the medical humanities or 2) creative works like prose and poetry; several journals do both. As with any journal submission, it is important to read and understand the scope and the audience of a medical humanities journal to maximize your chances of successful publication.
Several medical humanities-focused journals are described below. These are presented in no particular order and their inclusion does not necessarily imply an endorsement from me. I do, however, encourage authors to at least consider these journals as well as any other journals not included on this list.
The Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine : The Intima is “a literary journal dedicated to promoting the theory and practice of narrative medicine, an interdisciplinary field that enhances healthcare through the effective communication, empathy and understanding between clinicians, caregivers and patients.” It features a broad selection of humanities and narrative medicine articles including personal essays, multimedia artwork, and academic works.
Journal of Medical Humanities: A peer-reviewed, scholarly journal that, according to its website, publishes “innovative research, creative scholarship, poetry, essays, reviews, and short reports in the health humanities.” This journal publishes articles from the “academic” side of the medical humanities, so consider this for your research, review, and analysis articles. Its website boasts an impressive 16-day turnaround time for submissions, so you should get a decision relatively quickly.
Literature and Medicine: This medical humanities journal founded in 1982 publishes just twice annually: one general issue and one thematic issue per year. According to the journal’s website, areas of interest include “disease, illness, health, and disability; violence, trauma, and power relations; and the cultures of biomedical science and technology and of the clinic, as these are represented and interpreted in verbal, visual, and material texts.”
Medical Humanities: An international medical journal published by the BMJ, this journal covers a wide range of topics related to medicine and the humanities. Much of its content consists of academic articles such as editorials, commentaries, review articles, and original research.
Hektoen International: A free online medical humanities journal published by the Hektoen Institute of Medicine, this journal covers a wide range of medical humanities topics, including literature, art, history, and philosophy. Articles are published online as they are accepted, and later combined into quarterly “issues.” You can find more submission details here.
Ars Medica: This Canadian journal publishes a mix of creative and scholarly work. It welcomes submissions in the form of written text (e.g. short stories, poetry, life writing, and essays), visual art, photography, mixed media, video, audio, and digital media.
HEAL (Humanism Evolving through Arts and Literature) : HEAL is an open access (all articles available for free) health humanities journal based out of my home state of Florida and supported in part by the Florida State University College of Medicine. HEAL publishes prose (fiction or non-fiction), poetry, artwork and photography, and audio/musical work. It also features a satirical column and welcomes submissions written in Spanish.
The Examined Life Journal: Published by the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, this medical humanities journal publishes one to two issues each year. It focuses on creative work over academic work. The submission period is typically in the spring months and utilizes the very easy-to-use Submittable portal.
The Healing Muse: Published by SUNY Upstate Medical University, this journal explores the connection between medicine and the arts through creative writing and visual art. Excerpts are available on the journal’s website and general submissions are open from September 1st to April 15th each year.
Blood and Thunder: A medically-themed arts journal published by the students of the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine. Readers can order back issues of the journal on its website, when they are updated and available. Unfortunately, parts of the website appear to not have been updated very recently at the time of this article’s publication (Fall 2023).
Literary Journals
Literary journals or magazines are niche publications that focus entirely on creative works, typically written prose such as fictional stories, creative-nonfiction, and/or poetry. While the may contain book reviews, commentaries, or other forms of analytical work, they differ from scientific journals in their focus and audience. Simply put, they are written, edited, and read by people who care deeply about the art of writing. These publications contain the work of first-time authors as well as famous writers.
Many literary journals are considered highly prestigious and simply being included in one can launch a writer’s career. Stories and essays in these journals are often selected for coveted writing awards, such as the Pushcart Prize. Because of the limited amount of journal space, selective editorial process, and huge numbers of prospective writers hoping to find success, the acceptance rates of literary journals are staggeringly low. Even literary journals with lesser prestige can boast acceptance rates of just 1-2%.
These low acceptance rates, however, should not cause authors to despair. Rather, these journals should be seen as aspirational goals intended to house a writer’s very best work. While literary journals do not often limit the subject matter of the work they select (and thus, any literary journal could accept writing related to health and medicine), some journals may be better suited than others for healthcare writers. Below are just a few examples of literary journals to consider as targets for your very best humanities work.
Bellevue Literary Review: This journal is perhaps the best example of the intersection of a health humanities and literary journal. The journal traces its roots to Manhattan’s Bellevue Hospital, giving it strong medical DNA. Because of this, its content focuses on health and illness. However, this scope is open to broad interpretation and the journal publishes a diverse array of excellent writing. Work published here has won many awards, including the prestigious Pushcart Prize, which famously launched the career of author Celeste Ng, creator of work such as Little Fires Everywhere.
Courtesy Bellevue Literary Review
The Master’s Review: The Master’s Review easily qualifies as a “legitimate” literary journal, but since it promotes itself as a platform for “emerging writers,” it may be an easier target for those writers who spent their early years learning medicine and not getting a Masters of Fine Arts (MFA). The Masters Review mostly publishes fiction and narrative non-fiction; it also features a section without submission fees and holds multiple contests throughout the year. I highly recommend the Masters Review newsletter, which collects and shares writing deadlines each month.
Kenyon Review: I could have chosen any of a number of prestigious literary journals to include on this list; I added Kenyon Review because of its consistently high quality and broad acceptance of creative license. Like many high-end literary journals, Kenyon Review doesn’t have to beg writers for content. Because of this, it has a tiny general submission window: just the month of September each year (it does, however, have other contests open throughout the year). This is the journal for those of you who got into medicine only because you ignored your true calling as a writer.
Hippocampus Magazine: Don’t let the name fool you; this isn’t a medically-focused journal! Hippocampus Magazine is an excellent non-fiction literary journal that focuses only on true stories and personal memoirs. Keep in mind, these still need to be written with skillful prose and an artistic eye; no stuffy case reports here! I was lucky enough to have my essay “I’m OK” published by Hippocampus Magazine.
These are just a few examples. You can find a ridiculously long list of literary journals here.
Keep in mind that literary journals often have even lower acceptance rates and longer decision times than many academic medical journals. Approach submission to these journals with patience and tempered expectations.
Five Tips for Writing Medical Humanities Articles
1. Start with a Central Theme or Universal Idea– It’s tempting to simply describe an interesting event or exciting situation. However, these reflections only resonate with readers if they are connected to a relatable theme, something that speaks to readers on a level that is relevant to their lives. Consider the lesson learned from the situation, the connection it has to past or future events, or how it might impact others. These connecting threads often reveal the larger ideas at play. Lean into those ideas and elevate them with your writing.
2. Craft a Story Arc– Compelling stories all have the same basic ingredients: a beginning/middle/end, a conflict and its resolution, and some kind of change for the characters. Make sure your short story or narrative essay contains all of the essential elements of a story. If you can’t identify these in your work, you might have simply created a “scene” rather than a story. Add a narrative engine to move the reader through the arc of a story.
3. Don’t Sterilize Your World– Authors often cling to common, ideas, actions, and descriptions in an attempt to maintain reader attention and stay within comfortable territory. The protagonist is wise and benevolent; the patient is humble and grateful; the hospital is crowded but somehow manages to always get the job done. By stereotyping and sterilizing our settings, characters, and action, we create a world that is nothing like the one in which we live, a world that is boring and, frankly, dishonest. Be brave enough to include the gritty details, the uncertain shades of gray, and all of the other complexities that make real life…real.
4. Vivid Descriptions, Used Sparingly– Crystalline imagery and vivid descriptions are often the hallmark of good prose. Embrace the opportunity to linger on details and paint a picture with the brushstrokes of your words. However, use this ingredient sparingly. Stories are often bogged down when writers think they need to furnish every room and introduce every character with their eye color and shoe size. Give description with purpose and trust your readers’ imaginations to fill in what’s missing as you move your story forward.
5. Know Your Audience and Outlet– As you have discovered throughout this article, the material known as “medical humanities” is vast and diverse. Before you format and submit a manuscript, understand your work’s identity and ensure that you match this with the right publication. If your writing is edgy and experimental, it might be better suited for literary outlets than the stuffier academic journals. If your work leans more classic and straightforward, its ideal home might be in the humanities section of a traditional medical journal. The best way to determine this is to read a wide variety of publications and see what type of work they prefer.
