Culturescope.ca - The Arts and Health II:<br>Use of the Arts in Health Professional Education<br><i>April 2007</i>

University of Alberta Medical Students' Jazz Band, Syncope: Nick Graham, Ahmar Khan, Jack Chiu and Darrin Leung, Photo: ExpressNews Staff: Ryan Smith

The Arts and Health:
Use of the Arts in Health Professional Education

Table of Contents

Introduction

Examples of Use of the Arts in Medical
and Health Education

Challenges and Opportunities

Conclusion

Acknowledgements

Feature developed by Pamela Brett–MacLean, PhD(C), co-director of the Arts and Humanities in Health and Medicine program at the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry.

This paper is based on a presentation by Pamela Brett–MacLean, co-director of the Arts and Humanities in Health and Medicine program at the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, at the March 1, 2007, In Focus Speakers’ Series Workshop on the Arts and Health.

Susan Pointe, art advisor for the Friends of University Hospitals, presented a paper on the role of the arts in health-care facilities at the same workshop. This was published as a companion Arts in Health In Focus article.

Special thanks to Dr. Kate Collie, Dr. Jim Connor, Dr. Marcel D’Eon, Dr. Ross Gray, Dr. Jeff Nisker, Susan Pointe, Dr. Ronald Stewart, Dr. Verna Yiu, and Dr. Catherine Younger–Lewis for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Policy Research Group of the Department of Canadian Heritage Planning and Research Branch, which helped make this event possible.

The views and opinions in this paper reflect those of the author and do not necessarily represent the positions of the Department of Canadian Heritage or the Government of Canada.

Introduction

“Including the medical humanities as part of a health care professional’s basic training remains pivotal in helping to shape his or her future, both as a compassionate practitioner and as a reflective human being.”

– Friedman, 1992, p.320

“Art and the approach to life through art, using it as a vehicle for education and even for doing science is so vital that it is part of a great new revolution that is taking place.

– Jonas Salk

Interest in the medical humanities has led to heightened awareness of the role that the arts can play in health-sciences education.

The medical humanities — “for lack of a better term” (Campo, 2005, also see Kidd & Conner, in press) — offers a focus in health professional education that is aimed at fostering understanding, compassion, and empathy by incorporating humanities (history, ethics, law, philosophy) and social sciences (anthropology, psychology, sociology) perspectives, and the arts (literary, visual, music, drama). The medical humanities have been described in relation to medicine (Cassell, 1984; Murray, 1998), nursing (Corri, 2003; Darbyshire, 1994), occupational therapy (Peloquin, 1996), and physical therapy (Thow & Murray, 1991), among other health professions.

In this article, I provide a historical context and examples of the use of the arts in medical and health-care education. Challenges and opportunities characterizing this relatively young, emerging area in Canada are also considered.

Despite the close connections that exist between the arts, humanities, and medicine, there has been a strong emphasis on science and technology in medical and health education. This has been attributed to Flexner’s (1910) turn-of-the-century report that emphasized bioscience and research in medical education, as well as advances in science and technology over the past century.
Calls for a broader and more balanced approach to health-care education have increasingly been made in the past few decades.

In 1985, Bruce Squires, associate scientific editor of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, encouraged a “balanced serving of the arts, the humanities, and the natural and social sciences” (p.1000). In 1995, Myra Levine called for a greater presence of the arts and humanities in nursing education. Numerous statements and reports published by various working committees and task forces have emphasized the need to support the development of humanistic qualities in health professionals.

Response to this concern has been addressed by lectures on ethics, the history of medicine, health law, and other social-science and behavioural aspects of medicine. In addition, student electives and clubs have supplemented the more scientific and technological aspects the curriculum.

Dedicated medical humanities programs have also been introduced. The first such program in the US was established in 1967 at the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine (Hawkins, Ballard, & Hufford, 1993). The first medical humanities program in Canada was established in 1992 at Dalhousie University (Murray, 2003). Other programs exist at the University of Manitoba (Magwood, Casiro, & Hennen, 2003), at Memorial University of Newfoundland (Pullman, Bethune, & Duke, 2003), and at the University of Alberta (Brett-MacLean & Yiu, 2006). There has also been a longstanding focus on the arts and humanities at the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Western Ontario, both in the mandatory curriculum and in extracurricular activities (Nisker, 2007).

Medicine has been called an art and has often been described in relation to its aesthetic aspects. Bleakley, Marshall, and Brömer (2006) propose that:

“The applied science of medicine is surely already aesthetic—it is neither intrinsically dull nor dulling (an-aesthetic) where it generates continuing wonder concerning the body and increasing expertise in sensitive application of knowledge. It takes effort to dull the intrinsic beauty of medicine, but knowledge is often both taught and learned in insensitive and unimaginative ways.” (p.200)

In recording and interpreting illness and disease and experience of caring, the arts reflect the particularity of health care situations and relationships (Scott, 2000). In doing so, the arts recognize medicine as a deeply human endeavor and foster an embodied approach to learning.

Although a systematic survey of arts-related activities in Canadian medical schools has not been conducted, a review of humanities programs in medical schools in Canada reveals a range of arts experiences (curricular and extra-curricular) that are available to medical students (Kidd & Connor, in press).

In the US, a recent study found that over half of all US medical schools involved the arts in learning activities (Rodenhauser, Strickland, & Gambala, 2004). This survey found that the arts are used to foster student well-being, enhance teaching and learning, and improve clinical and relational skills, for example, observation and diagnostic skills, reflection and insight.

Examples of Use of the Arts in Medical and Health Education