A Medical Humanities Literacy–Oriented Holistic Formation Model for Medical Students: A Theoretical Study

Abstract

The modernization of medicine under conditions of technological acceleration, organizational complexity, and heightened social expectations requires medical education to cultivate not only technical competence but also humanistic literacy that sustains ethical judgment, interpretive understanding, and professional identity. Yet discussions of “holistic education” in medicine often remain aspirational or are reduced to curricular additions without a coherent conceptual architecture. This paper proposes a theoretical model of holistic formation for medical students oriented toward medical humanities literacy (MHL). Building on contemporary scholarship on professional identity formation, competence as a multilayered construct, the hidden curriculum, and narrative approaches to medicine, the model conceptualizes MHL as a foundational capability that integrates moral reasoning, narrative understanding, social imagination, and reflexive agency. The study develops a four-layer architecture—normative orientation, epistemic integration, institutional ecology, and developmental evaluation—through which MHL can structure holistic formation without relying on specific pedagogical prescriptions. The paper further clarifies how the model addresses common institutional tensions in medical education, including metric-driven performance cultures, fragmentation of professionalism, and the marginalization of meaning-making capacities. By framing MHL as an organizing principle for whole-person formation, the paper contributes a coherent theoretical foundation for future research and system-level design in medical education.