Humanizing Medicine in the Age of Omnimedia: Enhancing Medical Humanities Literacy through Integrated Communication Environments

Abstract

The rapid development of digital communication technologies and the rise of omnimedia have transformed the ecology of knowledge dissemination in healthcare. The democratization of medical information, participatory media practices, and the blurred boundary between expert discourse and public interpretation have reshaped the social expectations of medical professionals. In this context, medical humanities literacy, which refers to the ethical sensibility, cultural competence, empathetic communication, and human-centered value orientation of medical practitioners, has become increasingly important. However, existing medical education systems have not fully integrated the communicative dimension of professional identity formation into humanities curricula. This study explores how omnimedia environments—characterized by convergence, interactivity, and trans-platform circulation—can serve as a catalyst for enhancing medical humanities literacy among medical professionals and students. Through a synthesis of theoretical insights and empirical observations from medical education reform, this paper argues that omnimedia communication not only reshapes how medical knowledge is produced and shared, but also offers new opportunities to cultivate narrative competence, emotional resonance, intercultural awareness, and patient-centered clinical reasoning. The paper analyzes both the challenges and potentials that omnimedia environments present, identifies the mechanisms by which communication practices shape humanistic competencies, and proposes a set of strategies for embedding omnimedia literacy and humanistic communication training into medical education and professional development. This study contributes to ongoing discussions on humanized healthcare, physician-patient trust, and the social accountability of medicine in contemporary society.