In 2016, Shelly Rosenblum and Carol-Ann Courneya (Assistant Dean of Student Affairs at UBC’s Faculty of Medicine) collaborated to create  Art and Medicine: Rounding at the Belkin, a course that invited medical students to consider how engaging with art could strengthen observational skills in the sciences. In accordance with the Belkin’s mandate to develop initiatives in teaching, learning, research and scholarship across the university, the course was offered as part of the UBC Faculty of Medicine’s Flexible and Enhanced Learning (FLEX) Program, which was designed to give medical students the opportunity to explore their research interests and develop a well-rounded toolbox of skills necessary for professionals in the medical field.

Art and Medicine, open to first year medical students, was inspired by the growing body of research that demonstrates an improvement amongst doctors in their ability to look carefully, think critically about what they see and empathize with others when they engage with visual art. Over the span of six weekly meetings, students were encouraged to visually analyze works from the Belkin’s permanent collection and exhibition programming, as well as with works around campus and other public works throughout Vancouver. The course was structured around what cognitive psychologist Abigail Housen and art educator Philip Yenawine call Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS). VTS protocols involve facilitated group discussions about works of art to help participants look carefully, to think deeply about what they see, and to discuss these findings in a group setting. As Reilly et al. have pointed out, these protocols have much in common with the process of group diagnosis in medical practice. By enhancing students’ abilities to look systematically, they are able to more strongly identify and defend what they see. At the same time, the collective analysis of works of art asks students to engage in a field in which they are not expert. Prompted by the facilitator and their peers, students must defend their impressions by means of what they can actually see in the work in front of them. Consequently, they must learn to accommodate multiple ideas and interpretations at one time,  and to build upon new layers of understanding while remaining grounded by visual evidence. In so doing, students also have the opportunity to consider the biases or pre-existing assumptions that they might bring to a work and its subsequent interpretation – a process that has a significant resonance with doctor to patient communication.

Looking at art in this way becomes an evidence-based practice, revealing the parallels in observational methods that are intrinsic to the disciplines of art and medicine, as well as in the sciences more generally. It also asks students to collect evidence without the assumption of certainty or of a single right answer – as Rosenblum notes, this aspect of the course enhances students’ “tolerance for ambiguity.” This is an important skill in a field where much remains unknown. The collaborative process relies upon the respectful but critical processing of different points of view in order to arrive at the most substantiated understanding of the works. According to Rosenblum, “That’s what really resonated for the Medical School: that increasing an ability to tolerate ambiguity is a fundamental part of medical pedagogy that we have to find avenues to look at.”

To read Rosenblum’s interview with Melissa Huang, please click here.

PHoto (Above): Michael R. Barrick