Medicine and the Arts: Ways of Envisioning a New Perspective on Health

How can we enable medical students to envision differently? This project will explore, through pre and post qualitative survey questions, an art immersion experience where various important art works are surveyed with the view to assessing if students ‘see’ differently after studying works of art. Research from Yale University demonstrates that medical students enhanced their observational skills when art was used in their teaching (Dolev, 2001 ) Indeed, several parallels between art and medicine emerged from a study by Shapiro, Rucker and Beck (2006: 268 of medical students, “including the importance of learning how to read gesture and expression, how to interpret context, how to determine what is symbolically as well as literally important, how to be sceptical about initial assumptions, and finally, how to empathically perceive emotional dimensions and narrative”. This project will look at how art might be used to enhance student learning, perception and understanding. The art immersion and evaluation experience will be voluntary, with students viewing various paintings either on line or in an art gallery.