Can looking at fine art make for better doctors? The Yale School of Medicine thinks so, and has created a workshop where students visit museums to study paintings and then discuss their observations, according to Yale News.
The workshop, part of the curriculum for first years, resulted in a 20 percent improvement in observational skills in its participants, according to a two-year study by Yale alumni Jacqueline Dolev, M.D., one of the first students in the course. Now a practicing dermatologist in San Francisco, Dolev made the program the subject of her medical school thesis and published the results in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Now she has teamed up with Irwin M. Braverman, M.D., to spread the news about the workshop's success during the first episode of a new series of Yale netcasts titled "Doctor, Doctor: Conversations about Medicine." The netcasts will explore topics of interest to physicians and patients, according to Yale News. Braverman, professor emeritus of dermatology, is the co-creator of the Workshop on Observational Skills, which the medical school began offering in the late 1990s.
Workshop participants study paintings and then discuss what may be taking place based on their observations. In the netcast, Dolev says students initially thought the workshop would be fun but doubted its effectiveness. However, it did improve observational skills and in the past 15 years, similar programs have been offered at more than two dozen medical schools in the U.S. and at colleges in London, Dublin and Taiwan, Yale News says. The first netcast, "The Art of Noticing," can be viewed on iTunes.
Yale isn't the only medical school to use discussions about the arts to help its students. Harvard Medical School has a similar program where doctors in training at Brigham and Women's hospital discuss works of art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston to help improve their communication skills, as FiercePracticeManagement previously reported.
Art also has a role to play in physician wellness. So many physicians and healthcare professionals turn to creative writing to cope with the emotional burden of their work, that it has become its own genre, with its own literary journals and prizes. Concerned about physician burnout and the high rate of suicide within the profession, Stanford University is using the arts to help its physicians communicate about their work and emotions.
To learn more:
- read the article
- watch the netcast