Anthropological Engagement in Medical Education: An Introduction

Abstract

This peer-reviewed book emphasizes the important role of anthropology in educating physicians throughout the world to improve patient care and population health. We reflect on how anthropologists have engaged in medical education to date and how to positively influence the careers of future anthropologists in medicine. Anthropologists working to prepare future physicians must not only be familiar with the culture of biomedicine, but also aware of the culture of medical education as well as the health systems in which medical students work. In this book, we describe the past and current experiences of anthropologists in medical schools, the modes and magnitude of this engagement, and reflect on these experiences from diverse settings in medical education globally. In this chapter, we introduce the scope of work of this book and its contributing chapters which is organized in four sections: (1) medical school culture, (2) beyond cultural competency, (3) ethics and humanities, and (4) addressing the socio-cultural determinants of health and health disparities.

Medicine is a social science and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale. Medicine as a social science, as the science of human beings, has the obligation to point out problems and to attempt their theoretical solution; the politician, the practical anthropologist, must find the means for their actual solution. The physicians are the natural attorneys of the poor, and social problems fall to a large extent within their jurisdiction.

Rudolf Virchow (1848–1849) Die Medizinische Reform