The Art of Medicine

Professor teams up with Fralin Museum to teach perspective to Med Students

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“Art doesn’t only serve one purpose,” said Jordan Love, the Academic Curator of the University’s Fralin Art Museum.

This much was clear to both Love and Assoc. Medical Education Prof. Dr. Marcia Day Childress when they collaborated with University alumnae Louisa Howard and Emma Murphy to create the Clinician’s Eye Program. This innovative learning technique, based on similar programs at Harvard and Yale, hones medical students’ diagnostic skills through artistic analysis. Barely a year old, the class is held at the Fralin, where groups of about 12 medical students spend time discussing selected works of art.

“Visual analysis can be harnessed to improve medical school students’ diagnostic and observational abilities,” Love said. “Clinician’s Eye is a fun way of using art to do that.”

The program requires students in a fast-paced academic setting to slow down the process of deduction and think about what they are observing.

“One of the most important things these exercises help us do is make sure students separate description from interpretation,” Childress said. “Often we’re asking them to back up and ask questions on a very simple level.”

One of the program’s most challenging exercises requires a pair of students to work together, one describing a piece of art while the other attempts to draw it solely from the description. The results can be entertaining, as well as revealing about the importance of communicating and listening closely.

“Students say this can be very hard,” Love said. “It’s good to acknowledge that seeing and communicating is a difficult thing — acknowledging that will make you respect the difficulty.”

The program’s interdisciplinary approach aims to help students develop their powers of observation. Though two-thirds of participants have no background in art or its history, most medical students agreed the program is helpful in addressing the difficulties of observation and communication which doctors face daily.

“Across the board they loved it — they had a really good time doing it but they immediately saw value in it,” Childress said.