Medical Humanities. Recognition and reorganization within the Italian University

In recent years specific changes have characterized medicine, that range from the patient’s principle of self-determination to the new subjective meanings of quality of life, wellbeing and disease. The need to address and manage these changes inevitably means the recovery of the traditional humanistic roots of medicine that, by an educational perspective, involve the presence of academic medical courses focused on a holistic and critical perspective of medical care (1), able to take into account the patients’ human experience (2) and to promote a sensibility that respects different point of views in various areas of ethics (3). Such an integrative and complementary vision could be achieved by the so-called “Medical Humanities” which, however, at present enjoy little consideration, especially within the medical context (4)