Abstract:

In contemporary society, marked by the complexity of knowledge and the evolution of clinical practices, universities are called upon to radically rethink their educational methods. They must not limit themselves to transmitting theoretical knowledge but should encourage active and experiential learning that integrates scientific competence with the human and relational dimensions of care.
In medical education, this means moving beyond traditional teaching models and promoting experiential training in which students are actively engaged as protagonists in a process of personal and professional growth. The training of future doctors must therefore be oriented toward complexity, the integration of the biomedical model with the relational model, and the capacity to collaborate with other professionals. This perspective guided a group of medical students from an Italian university who participated in an interdisciplinary workshop on care relationships, based on a phenomenological-hermeneutic approach. The aim was to foster reflection and provide practical tools for managing helping relationships in emotionally demanding contexts through group work centred on listening, dialogue, and the sharing of experiences. At the end of the workshop, participants were asked to write personal narratives about their experience. These texts were then subjected to content analysis, leading to the identification of several phenomenological categories representing the main emerging themes. The results reveal how the workshop helped transform students’ understanding of the meaning of care and of the doctor’s role. Many described a profound shift in perspective: “This course opened my eyes” (student 7). Others emphasised the limits of the reductionist view of medicine often conveyed by traditional curricula: “During my university studies, I found myself considering patients as machines in which a component had failed or broken and needed to be repaired or replaced” (student 2).Each session included the shared reading of testimonies from doctors, nurses, and parents of ill children. This practice enabled students to confront the dimension of complexity as an interplay of diverse experiences, voices, and professional perspectives: “Complexity must be integrated in its various parts, combining the experiences of a plurality of witnesses and professionals” (student 9). Group work, open to interdisciplinary dialogue, also proved to be highly generative: “In a working group, it becomes possible to find completely different opinions” (student 1). Based on these results, it appears essential to implement experiential learning paths focused on care relationships and aimed at developing critical thinking, self-reflection, and relational awareness. The phenomenological-hermeneutic approach has proven particularly effective in fostering this integration between technical competence and the human dimension. By offering such educational opportunities, universities can become places of genuine personal and professional transformation—capable of forming doctors who not only treat disease but truly care for the person, thus restoring medicine to its deepest relational meaning.

Keywords:

Experiential teaching, Medical training, Care relationships, Phenomenological-hermeneutic approach, University learning.