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Transferring Skills from Paint to Patient

Training for Medicine with Both Sides of the Brain

By Kelly Harmon, Assistant Principal of Curriculum and Instruction,

Monmouth County Vocational School District

One December morning The article originally published in narrative painting conferred skills that
in 2001, one of my World The Journal of the American Medical were transferable to the examination of
photographs of patients with medical
Association showcased the Medical
Language instructors School’s Program for Humanities in disorders. The mean scores of the
(Kathryn Fitzsimmons) at Medicine. “Part of the series of classes intervention group improved 9% when
and events are enforced to provide
the pretest scores were compared
the Academy of Allied Health medical students with encounters with posttest scores, whereas the
and Science stumbled wherein the human form appears in control group remained unchanged…
a different context from that which
The results showed a nearly 10%
upon an article in the USA students are accustomed to” (Dolev, improvement in students’ ability to
Weekend Sunday edition, Friedlaender and Braverman, 2001). detect important details” (Dolev,
The article discussed how to hone
Friedlaender and Braverman, 2001).
describing Yale Medical students’ faculties of perception and After reading the article, she brought
School’s new program to encourage a form of observation that it to the building principal, Mr. Timothy
does not depend on interpretation. The
use art as a tool to develop article cited a study that “demonstrated McCorkell, explained Yale’s approach
to the humanities, and described their
better observational skills. that visual examination and objective rationale for infusing mandatory arts
description of a representational
classes into their medical students’

Educational Viewpoints -87- Spring 2018