Modern mentality, domination, and the unequal field of knowledge, resources, and talent; Challenges of the formation of medical humanities in Iran

Medicine, because it is closely related to the human subject, needs to be related to the humanities. Despite more than half a century of debate, the debate over how to form and develop the medical humanities remains one of the most serious academic challenges in the world. In Iran,medical humanities is one of the most important interdisciplinary needs, which, of course, has not been seriously considered for various reasons. The purpose of this study is to investigate this issue from the perspective of humanities faculty members.The theoretical framework is the foundations of interdisciplinary science and Marcus's one-dimensional man theory. The present study is a national qualitative study that was conducted in 2019.Considering the saturation criterion, data were collected with 23 semi-structured interviews and two open end questionnaires.The study analysis was performed by thematic analysis method. The results showed that the participants posed a serious gap in the formation of the medical humanities.According to the participants, the most important obstacles and challenges in the formation of medical humanities are presented under the four general themes of modern mentality, politics, society and organization, biomedical domination, and inefficiency of humanities.It is suggested that science policy makers and health policy makers in the country take basic measures to remove these barriers.in this regard, paying attentionto the humanities and strengthening it on the one hand and reducing the dominance of biomedicine on the other hand, along with institutional and organizational measures can lead to the development and expansion of medical humanities in the country.