The Silent “Teacher”: A Conceptual Framework and Teaching Model for Cultivating Medical Humanities in Morphological Experiments

Gaoshang Chai, Xiaorun Zhai Department of Basic Medicine, Wuxi School of Medicine, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, Jiangsu, 214122, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Xiaorun Zhai, Department of Basic Medicine, Wuxi School of Medicine, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, Jiangsu, 214122, People’s Republic of China, Email [email protected]: Objective: This paper aims to propose a structured pedagogical framework (Ritual–Narrative–Responsibility) for seamlessly integrating medical humanities into morphological experiment teaching, and to elaborate its theoretical foundations, specific implementation pathways, and preliminary evaluation strategies. The morphology laboratory is the initial space where medical students first confront the authenticity of life, serving as a venue for learning cellular structures and histopathology while guiding learners to perceive the profound life connotations behind microscopic specimens. Nevertheless, against the backdrop of increasingly technologized and instrumentalized medical education, morphological experiment curricula are facing a severe crisis: the gradual decline of humanistic spirit. As a conceptual framework and teaching model study, this paper explores the approach of integrating medical humanities education into morphological experiment teaching like salt dissolving in water. Based on a critical analysis of the “alienation” phenomenon in current teaching, it constructs an integrated model with “Ritual–Narrative–Responsibility” as three core pillars: fostering reverence for life through ritualized practices, inspiring empathy via narrative medicine, and forging professional accountability through ethical reflection. This paper expounds the theoretical bases, detailed implementation routes, and evaluation propositions of the three pillars respectively, emphasizing that medical humanities education is not an external appendage to morphological teaching, but an inherent requirement for its return to the essence of “life education”. It intends to guide students to focus on the complete “person” while exploring “diseases”, shape their professional virtues of reverence, empathy, and responsibility, and lay a solid humanistic foundation for cultivating future physicians with both medical expertise and compassionate hearts.Keywords: morphological experiments, medical humanities, silent teacher, empathy education, medical ethics