Practice Based Evidence: Delivering Humanities into Healthcare

Abstract

The title of this chapter could imply several things. First, it could cover the way evidence is derived from practice. Certainly, we will consider this later as this process is uniquely suited to the kinds of humanities interventions which are applied in healthcare contexts. Second, it could cover the kinds of evidence that may be needed in order to place humanities-based activities on the healthcare agenda and drive their inclusion in healthcare practice. Yes, this too will be among our considerations. But the relationship between the humanities, the idea of evidence and healthcare itself, is a lot more complicated than that. There are different cultures of what counts as evidence, conflicting ideas about how best to conduct human inquiry and tensions between the world of research and the world of practitioners. Therefore in this chapter one of our central tasks will be to explore what these cultures are and how they have evolved along different trajectories, as well as offering some ideas for their rapprochement to the benefit of scholars and practitioners as well as patients and informal carers.