Erasmus+ Programme, Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices (€225,000)
Medical history is commonly included in the program of medical humanities courses available for undergraduate medical students. The role of medical humanities in medical education responds to the need to connect medical practice with the human dimension of doctor-patient relationship and extra-scientific values involved in clinical decision-making processes. Medical humanities contribute to improve a fuller understanding of patients, cultures and communities, as well as the social dimension of scientific enterprise to cure illnesses and develop new therapies.Nowadays medical humanities courses at medical schools are frequently fragmented, due to the participation in the teaching activities of lecturers with different expertise, each one working on a separated and independent module. In these circumstances the teaching of medical history has been consistently affected by the lack of expertise of lecturers and the reduction of historians of medicine in medical schools.
The ALCMAEON project represents an alternative model of medical history provision and an attempt to overcome the gap between clinical practice and historical perspective of medical humanities, through the representation of the historical scenarios and the integration of historical evidences in specific educational contents. ALCMAEON will collect audio-visual material and digitise objects from medical museums in Italy, Spain, Greece, the Netherlands and Romania, in an attempt to promote the different traditions characterizing European medical history and bring the heritage of medical museums into the classroom. Our digital collection will be open access and supported through educational material to promote the cultural patrimony of university museums among the medical students of European Union and will contribute to disseminate a cross-cultural model of medicine to face the challenges of future health care services. The project is led by Professor Fernando Bandrés Moya and Professor Emanuele Valenti of the Complutense University of Madrid, with partners Dr. Eleni Kalokairinou of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, Professor Manon Parry of the Free University, Amsterdam and Amsterdam University, the Netherlands, Professor Maria Caporale of the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, Professor Viorel Scripcariu of the Grigore T. Popa University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Romania, and the EuroEd Foundation.