Why the Arts Matter in Medical Education

Featuring: Gretchen A. Case, Assistant Professor at the Division of Medical Ethics and Humanities, the Department of Internal Medicine, and the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Utah.

Gretchen Case will discuss the importance of the arts and humanities to physicians—those in training and those already in practice. Drawing on her experience as a faculty member at the University of Utah School of Medicine, she will explain how the arts work within a science-based curriculum to promote innovative, patient-centered, reflective thinking in our future health care professionals. Audience members will be invited (but not required!) to participate in portions of this Art Talk.

Dr. Case received a BA in Speech Communication and History and an MA in Communication Studies from UNC-Chapel Hill and a PhD in Performance Studies from UC Berkeley. Her research and teaching interests are in the medical humanities (aka healthcare humanities): the many ways in which the arts and humanities intersect with the medical arts and sciences. Her scholarly projects often combine communication, performance, disability theory, cultures of medicine, oral history, and ethnography. Dr. Case also has more than ten years of experience as a public historian, specializing in histories of science and medicine.

In addition to teaching at the School of Medicine, Dr. Case has taught in the Department of Theatre at the University and is a facilitator for the Physicians’ Literature and Medicine reading group. She currently leads the Literature and Medicine Affinity Group of the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities.