Educational Projects And Programs

Training The Medical Gaze:
Uses Of The Arts In Medical Education

Conference Coordinators: Johanna Shapiro, Ph.D., UCI-COM Department of Family Medicine; Eleanore Stewart, Associate Director UCI School of the Arts

Date: March, 2003 (date TBA)

Introduction: Medicine and art have always had important things to teach each other. Artists such as Leonardo da Vinci dissected cadavers to understand the human body, while medical texts long relied on skilled illustrations to represent their science. But in the twenty-first century, with all the sophisticated technological tools available to physicians for discovering pathology and diagnosing disease, does art still have anything valuable to teach medicine?

Purpose: The purpose of this conference is to address the question "What new theoretical, conceptual, pedagogical, and research tools are necessary to build usable bridges between arts scholarship and medical education?" A panel of experts from the fields of medical education and from visual arts, drama, and music will discuss how exposure to the arts can contribute to the education of physicians, in particular their pertinence to "hard-to-teach" clinical competencies such as compassion, altruism, and empathy.

Objectives: By the end of the conference, participants will have initiated a multidisciplinary process to:

Refine the intellectual basis for inclusion of the arts in medical school curricula
Identify pedagogical strategies that successfully develop applications of the arts in medical education
Explore research methodologies appropriate to this interdisciplinary activity
Consider new conceptual models that reformulate the fields of both medicine and the arts

Specifically, theoretical and research evidence will be presented arguing that well-targeted study of the arts can 1) improve students' ability to observe carefully and draw accurate conclusions 2) enhance students' understanding of and empathy for the patient experience, thus contributing to the professionalism of learners 3) encourage students to consider the role of creativity and imagination in patient care 4) enlarge students' understanding of the human condition.

Format: The keynote speaker will be a medical educator now incorporating arts into the medical curricula and publishing on this experience. We plan to invite one of a team of medical faculty from Yale University School of Medicine currently engaged in research on the efficacy of the use of fine arts to enhance visual diagnostic skills in medical students.

Small group discussions will develop ideas for interdisciplinary research in the arts and medicine based on the expert presentations. The conference will allow participants from the Schools of Art and Medicine, as well as other interested Schools (Education, Social Ecology) to 1) become familiar with the theoretical rationale for introducing arts exposure into medical education 2) participate in interdisciplinary dialogue identifying overlapping interests 3) identify opportunities for collaborative research in evaluation and assessment of arts-based curricular innovations as well as other aspects of the interface between the arts and medicine.