Medical Humanities - serious academic pursuit or doorway to dilettantism?

Despite increasing interest in incorporating Medical Humanities in undergraduate medical education, the discipline often suffers from a lack of clear definition in terms of scope, purpose and clinician engagement 1, and as yet rarely attracts the degree of postgraduate and research activity generally associated with substantive academic disciplines. This confusion is reflected by high degree of variability in the range of topics included under the rubric â one Irish university includes global health as a part of Medical Humanities, possibly to the detriment of the definition of each discipline - and there is tentative investment at best by Irish universities in the infrastructure of such courses.