"Literature Should Be A Medical School Admissions Requirement"
“As a physician who teaches both ethics and creative writing to medical students and house officers, I appreciate the value of using fiction and narrative to enhance the training of future physicians,” writes Jacob Appel, MD, assistant professor of psychiatry, medical education and director of ethics education in psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “These tools are certainly helpful in cultivating humanistic and compassionate doctors. Ideally, admissions committees at medical school should be looking for students who are imaginative and who are already reading literature, including literature about illness and physician-patient relationships.” He added that as a physician, he is often asked to listen to his patients’ stories with empathy; in contrast, not once has he ever had to calculate the trajectory of a patient to be shot out of a cannon.
- Jacob M. Appel, MD, Assistant Professor, Psychiatry, Medical Education, Director, Ethics Education in Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
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