A small study has suggested that medicine students may benefit from studying art with improved observational skills, which could be applied to their clinical work.
A group of 36 first-year medical students in Philadelphia took a course focused on visual perception. Half of them voluntarily attended six custom-designed, 90-minute lessons at the Philadelphia Museum of Art over a threemonth period. Instructors used an approach known as ‘Artful Thinking’, which begins by observing and describing colours, shapes, and lines, before graduating to more complex concepts such as ‘comparing and connecting’ and perspective-taking.
At the beginning and end of the program, all students took a series of tests. They were asked to describe, in detail, images that depicted artworks, retinas, and the faces of patients suffering from various eye-related diseases.
The observational skills of the 18 students who took the art course increased significantly over the three months. Those of the 18 who did not take it declined during that same period.
Art training could be helpful across many specialties – especially ones like ophthalmology, dermatology, and radiology, where diagnosis and treatment plans are based primarily on direct observation
The researchers wrote that the latter finding “raises the intriguing possibility that the initial medical school curriculum, with its intense focus on mastering the biological and molecular foundations of medicine, may actually inhibit the development of good observational skills early on”.
“Art training could be helpful across many specialties – especially ones like ophthalmology, dermatology, and radiology, where diagnosis and treatment plans are based primarily on direct observation,” said Gil Binenbaum of the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine.
Reference
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/ S0161642017317086
