Teaching and learning the History of Medicine in the university: some considerations after the students' final exams.

Abstract

Reports about the teaching of the History of Medicine  in universities worldwide can be found easily in medical literature. They are often comparative studies in which the opinions provided by the professors of  History of Medicine are collected and the teaching programs are compared. A survey  was also done  based on questionnaires given to the students, in which queries about programs and matters of the teaching were proposed, but answering the closed and predefined questions of a questionnaire can limit or condition the opinion of the student on the subject.

Our study is instead centered on the final tests of the students, in which the candidate had the ability to choose the topic of discussion, and to outline  his personal analysis. In this way the interaction between the student and the discipline, and his  feelings about it  appears to be more clearly recognizable.

Therefore, this study may be proposed as a contribution to improving the knowledge surrounding the various scenarios that characterize teaching the History of Medicine, and more so the Humanities, in Italian universities today.