Long-Term Impact of a Medical School Course on the Intersection of Art and Medical History

One recent trend in medical education is the integration of humanities into the curriculum, including viewing works of art in museums, with analysis of short-term, but not long-term, impact. We developed a course for medical students, trainees, and faculty at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai co-taught by an art historian and a physician/medical historian that features images of great works of art to make connections between art and medical history with the following goals: 1. To encourage the students to make careful and systematic observations, describe what they see to others in the group, and exchange their views respectfully, 2. To sensitize students to the patient's experience of illness by discussing artists' depictions of patients and the impact of their illness on family and friends, and 3. To highlight milestones in medical history by focusing on artworks that epitomize the state of medical care and science at a defined point in time. We have taught the course for more than a decade and so wanted to assess whether participating in the course had a long-term impact.

We created and deployed a five-question survey to 167 students and received responses from 35 of those students.

97% of respondents answered that they still think about the course, and large majorities of the respondents indicated that the course, had an impact on how they viewed works of art (91%), their appreciation of the history of medicine (89%), and their observational skills (80%). More than half the students responded that the course sensitized them to the patient's perspective of illness (63%) and had an impact on how they viewed their role as a physician (51%).

Our course has had a long-term impact on the respondents across a wide range of professional and personal characteristics.