Journal Article

Maturity model for assessing the medical humanities: a Delphi study

Zhang, Xin, Duan, Zhiguang

2024

Overview

Background Becoming a first-level discipline in China means access to more educational resources. The development of medical humanities in China has been going on for more than 40 years, and some medical schools have set up master’s and doctoral programs in medical humanities. The demand for medical humanities-related knowledge in China is also growing after COVID-19. However, medical humanities is only a second-level discipline and receives limited resources to meet the needs of society. This study aims to establish a system of indicators that can assess whether the medical humanities has a first-level discipline and provide a basis for its upgrading to a first-level. Methods A Delphi technique was used, with the panel of expert expressing their views in a series of two questionnaires. A coefficient of variation of less than 0.2 indicates expert agreement. Result A total of 25 experts participated in this Delphi study. Consensus was reached on 11 first-grade indices and 48 s-grade indices. The authoritative coefficient(Cr) of the experts was 0.804, which indicates that the experts have a high level of reliability. Conclusion This study provides a reliable foundation for the evaluation of medical humanities maturity.

• Publisher: BioMed Central,BioMed Central Ltd,Springer Nature B.V,BMC
• Subject: China / Curricula / Delphi / Delphi Technique / Doctoral Programs / Education / Equipment and supplies / Evaluation / First-level discipline / Formal organization / Humanities / Humanities Instruction / Humans / Knowledge / Maturity model / Medical Education / Medical humanities / Medicine / Questionnaires / Reproducibility of Results / Research methodology / Science and the humanities / Surveys and Questionnaires / Teaching / Theory of Medicine/Bioethics