The medical humanities is an emerging liberal interdiscipline, including the medicine, biological science and philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, psychology, law, literature, religion and other liberal domains. Contemporary bioscience and medical and health care have greatly surpassed the science and technology where the recognization and resolution of lots of important problems need the intervention and cooperation of liberal arts. Just under this kind of background, the medical humanities has developed into an emerging inter-discipline and become a liberal hot spot around the world.

The SEU Department of Medical Humanities is the earliest founded medical humanities and bioethics institute. It was the original medical humanities study room of the Nanjing Railway Medical College, which was set up in 1980s. In 2000, it was combined with the SEU School of Liberal Arts into the medical humanities center. In order to better adapt to the medical mode transition, speed up the interdiscipline development between medicine and liberal arts, and foster the cultivation of comprehensive talents, resources are integrated for setting up the SEU Department of Medical Humanities from 2003. Under the department, there are the applied psychology institute, health and social psychology research center, medical humanities institute, bioethics institute, medical aesthetics institute. The existing teachers of the Department of Medical Humanities are integrated with various university scholars into an inter-discipline team, covering philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, law, history, and medicine.

The Department of Medical Humanities is the southern base of the Ministry of Education medical humanities education, and the earliest academic institute of medical humanities teaching and national medical humanities teacher training base. In 1986, with the help from ethicist Wang Yushu,and Chen Lixing, the department held the first national medical ethics assistant continuing study course and then consecutively held above 20 medical ethics assistant courses and short bioethics training courses, which cultivated the first batch of medical ethics teachers for national medical colleges. From 2003, the department held the medical aesthetics design postgraduate courses for three consecutive years, cultivating about 130 medical aesthetics talents. In 1996, the first undergraduate major medical science of law was set up. About 300 undergraduates have been cultivated by 2004. Since 1980, the department plays a leading part in bioethics, medical science of law, medical aesthetics, medical anthropology, and medical psychology, and plays an important role in the Chinese medical humanities development. The department offers applied psychology master station and undertakes the master and doctor student cultivation of the majors bioethics and health care management.

The academic leaders of the department are health care policy and examination center experts of the country and Ministry of Public Health, or the directors of Chinese Medical Association Medical Ethics Association, Medical Aesthetics Association, and the medical humanities institutes of other countries and Jiangsu Province, or the editorial board members and consultants of above 10 academic journals, or the part-time professor and guest professor of American St. Beacon College, Russian St.Petersburg College Orthodox Eastern Church research center, Taiwan Fuying Technology University, Beijing University, Xinjiang Medical University, and Nantong University. The department hosted the special columns and subjects of the health magazine Dialogue Between Medicine and Humanities and issued the the twelfth five-year plan textbook Medical Ethics, Cosmetic Psychology, and series of medical humanities books(6 books have been issued, i.e Introduction to Medical Humanities, New Bioethics, Medical Psychology, Medical Science of Law, Medical Philosophy, Nursing Ethics.). Since 1990, the department has sponsored 4 national research projects and 16 provincial research projects; issued about 300 academic papers; published Postmodern Health Economic Ethics, Biomedical Ethics, Clinical Life Ethics, Human Genes Intervention Ethics Research, Hospital Ethics, Medical Science of Law, Ethetics Psychology, Image Ugliness: Explore Body Images and Body Image Disorder, Biological Medicine Ethics, etc.; won 20 provincial prizes.

The Department of Medical Humanities has a liberal ethics lab, 13 thousand volumes of books, and 100 kinds of academic journals. And it keeps in close touch with the Medical Ethics and Health Policy Center of Rice University USA, the Department of Medical Humanities of Michigan State University USA, the School of Life Sciences of Tsukuba University, the Life Ethics Center of New Zealand Otago University, the Applied Ethics Research Center of Hong Kong Baptist University, the School of Liberal Humanities of Taiwan Cheng Kung University, the School of Liberal Arts and Society of Taiwan Fooyin University of Science and Technology, the Applied Ethics Research Center of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Ethics Institute of Hunan Normal University, and other national and international famous institutes.