Evaluating the impact of the humanities in medical education.

The inclusion of the humanities in medical education may offer significant potential benefits to individual future physicians and to the medical community as a whole. Debate remains, however, about the definition and precise role of the humanities in medical education, whether at the premedical, medical school, or postgraduate level. Recent trends have revealed an increasing presence of the humanities in medical training.

Improving the adjustment of educationally disadvantaged students to medical school: the Summer Enrichment Program.

The Summer Enrichment Program (SEP) is a 6-week pre-matriculation program that targets students who may be at an educational disadvantage and/or may have difficulties adjusting to the rigors of medical school. The objective of the current study was to determine whether the SEP (a) eased the transition to the first year of medical school and (b) had an impact on academic performance during the first year of medical school. All students from groups underrepresented in medicine, who had been invited to participate in the SEP, and all Humanities and Medicine Program students who matriculated at Mount Sinai School of Medicine between 1999 and 2003 and were still matriculated during the 2003-2004 academic year were asked to respond to a survey distributed in the spring of 2004.