Exploring the significance of medical humanities in shaping internship performance: insights from curriculum categories
Background Medical Humanities (MH) curricula integrate humanities disciplines into medical education to nurture essential qualities in future physicians. However, the impact of MH on clinical competencies during formative training phases remains underexplored. This study aimed to determine the influ...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Taylor & Francis Group
2025-12-01
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| Series: | Medical Education Online |
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| Online Access: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/10872981.2024.2444282 |
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| author | Chao Ting Chen Anna Y.Q. Huang Po-Hsun Hou Ji-Yang Lin His-Han Chen Shiau-Shian Huang Stephen J. H. Yang |
| author_facet | Chao Ting Chen Anna Y.Q. Huang Po-Hsun Hou Ji-Yang Lin His-Han Chen Shiau-Shian Huang Stephen J. H. Yang |
| author_sort | Chao Ting Chen |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Background Medical Humanities (MH) curricula integrate humanities disciplines into medical education to nurture essential qualities in future physicians. However, the impact of MH on clinical competencies during formative training phases remains underexplored. This study aimed to determine the influence of MH curricula on internship performance.Methods The academic records of 1364 medical students across 8 years of admission cohorts were analyzed. Performance in basic sciences, clinical skills, MH, and internship rotations were investigated, including the subgroup analysis of MH curricula. Ten-fold cross-validation machine learning models (support vector machines, logistic regression, random forest) were performed to predict the internship grades. In addition, multiple variables regression was done to know the independent impact of MH on internship grades.Results MH showed the important roles in predicting internship performance in the machine learning model, with substantially reduced predictive accuracy after excluding MH variables (e.g. Area Under the Curve (AUC) declining from 0.781 to 0.742 in logistic regression). Multiple variables regression revealed that MH, after controlling for the scores of other subjects, has the highest odds ratio (OR: 1.29, p < 0.0001) on internship grades. MH explained 29.49% of the variance in internship grades as the primary variable in stepwise regression. In the subgroup analysis of MH curricula, Medical Sociology and Cultural Studies, as well as Communication Skills and Interpersonal Relationships, stood out with AUC values of 0.710 and 0.705, respectively, under logistic regression.Conclusion MH had the strongest predictive association with clinical competence during formative internship training, beyond basic medical sciences. Integrating humanities merits greater prioritization in medical curricula to nurture skilled, compassionate physicians. Further research should investigate the longitudinal impacts of humanities engagement. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-aba472ffc70545df9277c0cc6c0a0b75 |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 1087-2981 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-12-01 |
| publisher | Taylor & Francis Group |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Medical Education Online |
| spelling | doaj-art-aba472ffc70545df9277c0cc6c0a0b752025-01-25T12:14:11ZengTaylor & Francis GroupMedical Education Online1087-29812025-12-0130110.1080/10872981.2024.2444282Exploring the significance of medical humanities in shaping internship performance: insights from curriculum categoriesChao Ting Chen0Anna Y.Q. Huang1Po-Hsun Hou2Ji-Yang Lin3His-Han Chen4Shiau-Shian Huang5Stephen J. H. Yang6Department of Medical Education, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taipei, TaiwanComputer Science and Information Engineering, National Central University, Taoyuan, TaiwanDepartment of psychiatry, Taichung Veterans General Hospital, Taichung, TaiwanComputer Science and Information Engineering, National Central University, Taoyuan, TaiwanDepartment of Psychiatry, Yang Ji Mental Hospital, Keelung, TaiwanDepartment of Medical Education, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taipei, TaiwanComputer Science and Information Engineering, National Central University, Taoyuan, TaiwanBackground Medical Humanities (MH) curricula integrate humanities disciplines into medical education to nurture essential qualities in future physicians. However, the impact of MH on clinical competencies during formative training phases remains underexplored. This study aimed to determine the influence of MH curricula on internship performance.Methods The academic records of 1364 medical students across 8 years of admission cohorts were analyzed. Performance in basic sciences, clinical skills, MH, and internship rotations were investigated, including the subgroup analysis of MH curricula. Ten-fold cross-validation machine learning models (support vector machines, logistic regression, random forest) were performed to predict the internship grades. In addition, multiple variables regression was done to know the independent impact of MH on internship grades.Results MH showed the important roles in predicting internship performance in the machine learning model, with substantially reduced predictive accuracy after excluding MH variables (e.g. Area Under the Curve (AUC) declining from 0.781 to 0.742 in logistic regression). Multiple variables regression revealed that MH, after controlling for the scores of other subjects, has the highest odds ratio (OR: 1.29, p < 0.0001) on internship grades. MH explained 29.49% of the variance in internship grades as the primary variable in stepwise regression. In the subgroup analysis of MH curricula, Medical Sociology and Cultural Studies, as well as Communication Skills and Interpersonal Relationships, stood out with AUC values of 0.710 and 0.705, respectively, under logistic regression.Conclusion MH had the strongest predictive association with clinical competence during formative internship training, beyond basic medical sciences. Integrating humanities merits greater prioritization in medical curricula to nurture skilled, compassionate physicians. Further research should investigate the longitudinal impacts of humanities engagement.https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/10872981.2024.2444282Medical humanitiesmedical educationinternship performancemachine learning regressionmultiple logistic regression |
| spellingShingle | Chao Ting Chen Anna Y.Q. Huang Po-Hsun Hou Ji-Yang Lin His-Han Chen Shiau-Shian Huang Stephen J. H. Yang Exploring the significance of medical humanities in shaping internship performance: insights from curriculum categories Medical Education Online Medical humanities medical education internship performance machine learning regression multiple logistic regression |
| title | Exploring the significance of medical humanities in shaping internship performance: insights from curriculum categories |
| title_full | Exploring the significance of medical humanities in shaping internship performance: insights from curriculum categories |
| title_fullStr | Exploring the significance of medical humanities in shaping internship performance: insights from curriculum categories |
| title_full_unstemmed | Exploring the significance of medical humanities in shaping internship performance: insights from curriculum categories |
| title_short | Exploring the significance of medical humanities in shaping internship performance: insights from curriculum categories |
| title_sort | exploring the significance of medical humanities in shaping internship performance insights from curriculum categories |
| topic | Medical humanities medical education internship performance machine learning regression multiple logistic regression |
| url | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/10872981.2024.2444282 |
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