Health Humanities for Quality of Care in Times of COVID -19

The Covid pandemic has led us into an upheaval that has made us question the certainties underlying what it means to be a human being in our age; the ability to control medical and social facts through evidence. For the first-time western and developed countries have had to confront what many populations from the developing world (Africa. Latin America, etc) face on a daily basis with HIV and Ebola, etc. The Interconnectedness of Globalization has been the real disseminating catalyst of COVID 19, and many scientists wonder if this virus is the result of the Anthropocene age, with its indisputable lack of respect for the natural ecosystems.  The virus has demonstrated that our frailty is only skin deep, and it has not only brought death, despair, but it has broken our interdependency as human beings, by imposing self- isolation as well as creating new ways of connections so that safety cannot imply loneliness. In this book, the coping strategies that originate from the multiplelanguages of care such as narrative, literature, science, philosophy, art, digital science are shown not only as reflective tools to promote health but also wellbeing amongst carers, patients, students, and citizens of our planet Earth. These strategies should be supported by the decision makers since they are low-cost investments necessary to make the health care system work. They however require a change of cultural paradigm. This book is a useful toolkit for patients, citizens and care services physicians who want to learn more on how to live better with this new world.

Maria Giulia Marini is an epidemiologist, counselor at the Health and Wellness Department of the Fondazione ISTUD, MIlano Italy. With a classic humanistic background, she had a scientific academic training in Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Technology, and specialized in epidemiology and pharmacology: she developed a specific interest in the integration of humanities and sciences to favour care  humanization and to offer patients  a health system more in line with their needs and values. With more than 30  years of professional experience in health care, she is founder and president of EUNAMES, European Narrative Medicine Society, tenured professor of Narrative Medicine at La Sapienza, University in Roma Faculty of Medicine,  and referee for  WHO for  “Narrative Method in Public Health.”  Author of more than 100 national publications and several international publications, in 2013 she founded the online journal Chronicle of Narrative Medicine.

Jonathan McFarland currently works as Associate Professor in the  Faculty of Medicine at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and as Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Linguistics, I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University.  With a background in the Humanities - more than 20 years been working in the field of Medical English, he is a member of AMEE ( Association Medical Education Europe ), as well as being a member of the Moscow Office Committee, and ASME ( Association for the Study of Medical Education). He is also a Committee member of EUNAMES ( European Narrative Medicine Society), and a member of the honorary committee of the Gimbernat Surgical Society, as well as a member of ASOMEGA ( Association of Galician Doctors). He is the lay member for COMETA ( Ethics Committee for Primary Health Care for Mallorca). He is also co-editor of a forthcoming series for Springer entitled, New Paradigms in Healthcare. The first book in the series will be coming out very soon. 

He is the President of The Doctor as a Humanist, which is an International organization of students, scholars, educators and practitioners dedicated to the study, preservation and promotion of the humanities and humanism in medicine and healthcare around the world.