How can we use people’s lived experience of health and illness to improve clinical practice? This has been the focus for Professor Jane Macnaughton as the founder of our Institute for Medical Humanities. For the last 25 years, Jane has been at the forefront of this area of research, striving to humanise medical education.
Jane’s route into Medical Humanities was an unusual one. Having studied History and English at Glasgow University, she decided to pursue medicine.
However, having come from a humanities background, medical education felt very fact-based, and Jane noticed the lack of space for creativity or interpretation.
This observation sparked a mission to humanise medical education and include consideration of the lived experience in medical training and healthcare.
Jane joined Durham University in 2000, establishing what became the Institute for Medical Humanities (IMH). Under Jane’s guidance, the Institute has become a leading centre for understanding people’s experiences of health and illness. It has secured almost £20 million in support from the Wellcome Trust, including a recent major grant of £9 million awarded to the Institute’s new Director, Prof Angela Woods.
Throughout her academic career, Jane has continued her medical practice, keeping her grounded in the realities of patients living with chronic illnesses.
With her emphasis on patient care, Jane led a groundbreaking project called ‘Life of Breath’, which took an interdisciplinary approach to explore the lived experience of breathlessness.
Funded by Wellcome and in partnership with the University of Bristol and the British Lung Foundation, the project team developed innovative approaches to improve quality of life for those with chronic respiratory conditions.
Their work uniquely bridged biomedical science and arts-based approaches, including a dance programme that brought joy and fun to pulmonary rehabilitation.
In recent years, Jane has taken on the role of Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research, where she has focused on developing a positive research culture across Durham University through the Flourish@Durham programme. In addition, she has taken on the role as Chair of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics Governing Board.
Jane also remains engaged with the medical humanities field. She currently has a 4-year fellowship at Sweden’s University of Linköping Centre for Medical Humanities and Bioethics and Humanities, on a project focusing on Long Covid. This research aligns directly with Jane’s goal of showing how humanities can benefit medicine by examining the relationship between patient experiences and biological and neurological markers in this emerging illness.
After a quarter-century at Durham, Jane Macnaughton remains a pioneer in her field, whose dedication has helped establish medical humanities as a vital area of scholarship, offering new insights into health and wellbeing.
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