The Medical Humanities Research Center was established in March 1999. In 2011 it became the University’s foremost research base. The Center works hard to apply for Hubei Key University Research Base for humanities and social sciences. The Center has a research staff of 50, 10 of whom hold of doctoral degree. In recent years, three humanities and social science projects funded by Ministry of Education have been approved, and more than 50 provincial research projects have been completed, 4 works, more than 10 medical humanities textbooks and more than 120 papers have been published; of which more than 50 articles have been in core journals and, two have been awarded with second place by the provincial government. Since its founding, the Center has been actively engaged in exploring the combination between medical humanities and clinical practice. In 2009 Chinese humanistic medicine License skill training base granted by the Chinese Medical Association, the first one in Hubei Province. In 2010 the nation's first Medical Humanities Society was established.
The Medical Humanities Research Center originally dealt with the medical humanities and interdisciplinary sciences, but has now developed into the following five different research directions:
1. Medical Language Research: focusing on conversation analysis and critical discussion analysis Medical Language Research uses qualitative and quantitative research to decide language for clinical outpatients, rounds, preoperative conversations and health education. This research reveals the cultural characteristics of medical language, ethical features and pragmatic rules. At present a corpus with more than half a million words has been built.
2. Narrative Medicine: engaging in the comparative study of Chinese and Western medical thought in both social and cultural contexts, the study of Narrative Medicine investigates patient’s experiences, the shaping of the patient's identity by the disease, and effective communication between the doctor and the patient. The purpose this research is for a new method of contemporary medical model transformation and medical humanities education.
3. Medical Ethics Research: focusing its research on judgments and decision-making principles in medical research and medical practices Medical Ethics Research explores the solutions to ethical problems brought about by new medical technology. First based in Reproductive Medicine Research Center, the study carries out ethical research on reproductive medicine, and tries to build the norms for contemporary Chinese reproductive medicine.
4. Medical Psychological Research: studying clinical diseases, especially the cause and treatment for coronary heart disease among adolescents. By utilizing the principles of behavioral psychology and technology to explore the psychological causes, such as bad teenage behaviors a like internet addiction; Research of immigrant mental health have been conducted for the resettlement in the water-diversion project and provided issues for reference. Based on the affiliated hospitals and long-term clinical counseling, psychotherapy can be conducted.
5. Medical Legal Studies: using medical principals, legal systems, legal systems for medical practices, legal systems for medical identification, legal systems for medical liability and, the legal systems for settling medical Medical Legal Studies dispute the legal relationship between the doctor and the patient and, legal problems arising in the medical practice by medical staff and medical institutions in a transitioning society.
