Harvard survey arts and humanities in medicine

  Quote of the week

"Arts& Humanities at Harvard Medical School  aims to promote the role of the humanities in medical education, clinical care and research. A recent survey of the Harvard Medical School Community assessed the level of interest in the role of art, literature, music and theatre in medical education and patient care. 
After obtaining IRB approval, the survey was sent out to 13,512 faculty, trainees and students. Preliminary student responses were presented at the Harvard Academy Medical Education Day and showed that 72 percent of students who responded participate in the arts and 69 percent would support a formal program to integrate the arts into the medical school curriculum."

From the article Finding the Art in Medicine, Harvard Medical School,  Feb. 22, 2013

Can Fabric Art Foster Empathy in Medical Students?

Research by André Smith, Department of Sociology, University of Victoria explores the experiences of first- and second-year medical students who participated in a learning intervention that used fabric art and role-playing to foster the acquisition of empathy skills for end-of-life care. The intervention centers on students' engagement with artwork by renowned artist Deidre Scherer, who depicts the processes of aging, dying, and grieving in her work. Data was collected from qualitative interviews with students and from observations of students' participation in the intervention. The students reported experiencing intense feelings of empathy toward the patients depicted in the artwork. Based on these experiences, they successfully formulated empathetic responses that took into account the imagined perspectives of these patients. We conclude that this learning intervention effectively cultivated empathy in the medical students who took part in the study.

More about this research at
http://www.ijcaip.com/archives/IJCAIP-10-Smith.html