Medicine and the Art of Seeing

Abstract

Cet article sur la médecine et les humanités est un aperçu sur la pertinence d'incorporer une formation formelle des beaux-arts dans le curriculum médical afin d'optimiser l'habileté des cliniciens à poser un bon diagnostic. L'utilisation de repères visuels est d'une grande utilité pour discerner la pathologie et la physiopathologie de différentes maladies. L'éducation médicale conventionnelle souligne l'importance de l'examen physique lorsqu'on doit poser un diagnostic, mais néglige parfois l'enseignement d'une approche méthodique qui utilise activement l'observation afin de repérer des informations qui pourraient être très utiles dans le diagnostic d'un patient. Le curriculum actuel pourrait très bien incorporer l'étude des beaux-arts, car celle-ci implique une observation, une description et une interprétation du monde visuel qui nous entoure.H u m a n i t i e s Medicine and the Art of SeeingLeah Natalie Rosetti William Osler, one of the most celebrated doctors in Canadian history, once said that the "whole art of medicine is in observation" [1]. Indeed, a great deal of diagnostic power can be drawn from the visual world. Currently, medical educators train students by teaching them the cardinal features of disease and how to differentiate between normal and abnormal signs and symptoms. The skills underpinning this process are often taken for granted, however, and students may never be taught how to carefully and methodically observe their patients for all the relevant visual data points. The skill of deliberate looking falls into the realm of fine arts, where artists are trained in observing, describing and interpreting colours, textures, and shades; skills which are also essential to being an effective diagnostician. Formal training in fine arts for medical students has been shown to translate into better clinical skills and could have an increasing role in medical education.One method of enhancing visual literacy that has been used with success in medical education is known as visual thinking strategies (VTS), which encourages students to answer open ended questions about the content and meaning of specific works of art and build upon the ideas of their classmates. A family medicine residency program in Los Angeles incorporated VTS into their curriculum using well-known medical works of art including "Mr. S is Told He Will Die" (Figure 1) and "The Doctor" (Figure 2) [2][3][4]. Facilitators found that, in addition to improving teamwork among the residents, VTS improved their ability to "decode" the images in the paintings and develop a unified idea of what each piece of art was communicating. After these learning modules, residents reported improved ability to discern the nuances in color, texture, perspective, and shading of the various art pieces they examined while also broadening their interpretation of the artwork by scaffolding on the ideas of their classmates. Facilitators suggested that this would help the students solve more complex problems in medicine that draw on the same skills, like reading X-r...