It is known that many medicine, nursing and health science students watch medical television dramas and comedies. One study from John Hopkins University cites 84% of medical students and 81% of nursing students reported watching medical television dramas (Czarny et al. 2008). A similar study was done in Australia in 2011 in which 93.7% of medical students reported watching medical dramas in the last year (Weaver and Wilson, 2011). Among the shows specifically mentioned in these studies were Grey’s Anatomy, House M.D., Scrubs and E.R. The above data indicates that incorporating popular culture references into medical and health education is likely to increase student engagement and represents a source of untapped potential for effective communication of medical information from lecturers to students and, further downstream, from doctors to patients.
The purpose of this edited collection is to explore the relationship between popular culture and medical education. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Representations of health professionals in popular media and their possible impact on the perception of health-related careers
- The influence of fictional role models on health-related career choices
- The role of popular culture in the medical tertiary education environment
- The role of celebrity and social media in medical education
- The role of the medical humanities in fostering empathy in healthcare professionals
Chapters should be 4,000-6,000 words, double-spaced with size 12 Times New Roman font, and use the Chicago Manual of Style 16th edition (endnotes for citations). In addition, the following information should be supplied:
- Author’s title, name, affiliation and position
- A brief biography (no more than 5 sentences)
- An up-to-date C.V.
- An abstract for the chapter (no more than 125 words)
- 5-6 keywords for the chapter
- Permissions for any images used
- Copies of ethics approvals for any research protocols (if applicable)
A small number of reflective pieces on teaching practice will also be considered for inclusion in the collection. These should be no more than 1,500 words and should be written in the same style as the chapters. Special care should be taken to avoid breaching confidentiality for students or health professionals.
Submissions are due 1st November 2015 and should be emailed to the editors Evie Kendal and Basia Diug at med-merq.submissions@monash.edu.