MEDICAL Humanities is a phrase which could baffle the uninitiated, writes Marian Pallister. It sounds as if it would have tripped easily from the tongue of philosopher David Hume, but then, those who have been summarily dismissed by a lofty NHS consultant might take the phrase to mean qualities in which some doctors are severely deficient.

In fact, this is an American idea imported to Scotland eight years ago. Dr Rowena Murray, of Strathclyde University Centre of Academic Practice, and Morag Throw, of the Physiotherapy Division of Glasgow Caledonian University, were instrumental in getting the idea off the ground after a medic told Murray: ''Medical training breaks and scars people.'' It is all about fostering debate, raising issues, and helping medical students, nurses, and people in the caring professions to explore through literature their own beliefs and feelings on issues as wide ranging

as genetic engineering

and bereavement.

On June 13, there will be a medical humanities seminar in the Conference Centre of the Western Infirmary in Glasgow, and Morag Throw suggests it could be of more general interest: ''Everybody is human, so humanities can effect everyone.'' For the doubtful, she offers some ''for instances''. A book like Blue Above The Chimneys can help clarify how someone feels about disability, while Jurassic Park can help explore genetic issues. On matters of patient-doctor relationships, Throw says: ''It doesn't have to come out of an anatomy lecture.''

That, in fact, is perhaps what has gone wrong in the training of the medical profession and its ancillary strands. ''Everything becomes an 'ology' and is structured into the knowledge base.'' People developing as growing adults have a need, however, to express their feelings, to hear other interpretations. The buzzword in the medical profession may be reflection, but the training structure is not present in Britain to help nurture it.

It is easy to imagine areas in which a doctor or nurse might be confronted by a situation which conflicts with their own beliefs. Medical humanities offers the chance to help people listen to other viewpoints through discussion of poems, novels, and other areas of literature. Throw says: ''Caring skills are not talked about in personal terms. In the medical world, we don't talk about personal issues. Medicine is about getting through case loads.'' Whatever else medical humanities gives, it offers people a coping strategy.

Dr Rowena Murray, the literature buff in this coming-together of minds, would like to see medical humanities incorporated into training curricula, and says the US system is there for plucking from the Internet. Only time in medical courses is lacking. As things stand, there is no resource to fit in the teaching of ''reflective practice''.

There has, of course, been a tradition of keeping a professional distance from patients for their and the practitioner's protection. Murray sees this as false protection on the part of the practitioner. ''There are things which will impinge on you personally,'' she says, ''like the first death a student witnesses, the first body they see, the treatments which are boring, the patient they don't like, the new policy they have to adopt.''

The seminars which Murray and Throw organise provide the forum to talk about these things, and to talk about them with people outside the medical world. Administrators, librarians, and teachers have found their way into medical humanities and found texts triggering issues.

Murray, who has written a book on medical humanities, says her job is to ask what the text is saying; to discover whether people are overlaying it with their own interpretations. One text which pressed all the right buttons when she evaluated past seminars was Janice Galloway's The Trick Is To Keep Breathing. Galloway and Jennifer Black, who played the lead role in the dramatised production of the book, spoke at a seminar, and a passage early in the text when a health visitor comes to the house has sparked a whole range of reactions. Was the health visitor an effective facilitator? Perhaps not, because the woman is awkward and stressed in her presence. On the other hand, perhaps she is, because the woman has at least made an effort because the health visitor was coming to the house.

n Booker Prize nominee Bernard MacLaverty will read from his latest novel Grace Notes and Dr Mary McAteer from UCD Dublin will discuss using humanities in teaching health professionals at the June 13 seminar. For more information, contact Morag Throw on 0141 337 4782.