Through the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities, & History of Medicine, Duke offers a number of courses and activities for health professional learners to build connections and foster dialogue across communities. The MS1 bioethics and history of medicine interest groups hold monthly lunch meetings and topical discussions.
First-year medical students currently enrolled in the Humanism in Health Care elective can apply to join the Armstrong Humanities Scholars, a longitudinal program extending across years two through four. Electives in bioethics, humanities, and history of medicine are available for MS3/MS4 students, including the 4-credit Humanities for Health Justice elective. MS3 students can choose an ethics, history, or humanities topic for their primary research project through the Medical Humanities Study Program.
All students, regardless of professional background, can get involved in a range of other Trent Center activities, such as the Humanities in Medicine lecture series, Anatomy Drawing Program, the La Pluma narrative writing group, the VOICES literary magazine, and an annual interprofessional ethics night.
- Electives in medical humanities, including Humanism in Health Care: Bridging Stories and Practices.
- Armstrong Humanities Scholars Program
- Lectures and small-group discussions integrated into the curriculum
- Interest groups exploring topics in bioethics and in the history of medicine
- Third-year medical humanities study programs
- Medical student-led initiatives: Anatomy Drawing Program, VOICES Literary Magazine
2025-2026 SOM electives include:
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INTERDISC 111B: Humanism in Health Care This interprofessional elective will examine critical issues, moral decision-making, and change in the practice of healthcare. During the Fall semester, students will participate in one of several interdisciplinary small-group seminars, including disability studies, climate health, photography for health justice, literature and medicine, and narrative medicine. In the Spring semester, students will form interprofessional small groups to identify a challenge in modern healthcare practice and propose possible solutions in a Shark Tank style final presentation. Both semesters will include opportunities for further engagement, including Walks through Social History, medical humanities lectures, and book clubs/film discussions related to the course themes. Students may enroll for just one semester, or for both.
- MED 447C: Practitioners and Patients: The History of Clinical Medicine (section fall 82) – Dr. Baker. How has the physician-patient relationship changed over time, and what are its possibilities for the future? This class will consider these questions using a variety of sources from 20th century American medicine including medical memoirs, patient narratives, short stories, and other media. We will identify the critical historical processes (scientific, social, and cultural) that account for the structure of medical practice today, as well as examine the ethical tensions and controversies that have resulted.
- MED 452C: Clinical Medical Ethics: What Would a Good Physician Do? (section spring 81) – Dr. Briscoe. What is medicine for? What standards and norms reasonably guide physicians' actions? This course will consider rival answers to these questions, and then follow clinical ethical cases to grapple with questions about: the clinician-patient relationship, the limits of medicine, the meaning of autonomy, the place of conscience and judgment in the physician's work, the difference between an intended effect and a side effect, proportionality, sexuality and reproduction, the beginning of life, disability, and end-of-life care
- INTERDIS 403C: Narrative Medicine for Medical Learners (section spring 81) – Dr. Quaranta. In this course we will examine the intersection between the domains of narrative and medicine through the study of diverse representations of medical issues. Among the questions we will ask are: how does narrative give us greater insight into illness, medical treatment, doctor-patient relationships, and other aspects of health and medicine? How do illness and other experiences within the realm of medicine influence ways of telling stories? How do doctors' perspectives and patients' perspectives differ, and what, if anything, should be done to close those differences?
- MEDICINE-454C. Humanities for Health Justice (section spring 42) – Dr. Mantri. In this elective, students will learn to apply the skills learned in medical humanities and ethics to the modern reality of patient care. The course will be a hybrid of seminar discussions and clinical/interprofessional preceptorship in the inpatient or outpatient setting. Students will create two final papers: one self-reflective essay examining professional identity and goals for residency, and other a scholarly research project, creative work, or advocacy project