Death and the Doctor: the museum as a tool for understanding the needs of the dying

Over the past several years, the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford has been part of a multi- disciplinary team examining the question of how we train medical students to deal with those parts of their profession which are concerned primarily with the humanity of their patients. In collaboration with colleagues from Neuroscience, Psychiatry, History and Theology, the Museum has participated in an ongoing teaching experiment in which medical history, ethics and the visual arts are brought to bear on an understanding of medical professionalism - what it means to be a doctor and how to be a better one. Bringing together museum professionals, Expert Patient Tutors and doctors in curriculum planning and delivery, the work has been delivered online, using images from the museum’s collections, and live, using the Ashmolean galleries as spaces for the consideration of issues around death, dying and end-of-life care. This article and its preface reflect broadly on a decade of medical collaboration at the Ashmolean and specifically on the processes of both making and delivering teaching on dealing with death, in a cross-disciplinary, non-medical context, asking not only what the Museum can do for medical education but why medical education needs the museum.