Seeing Art as Medicine

Posted on by Allan Peterkin

Seeing Art as Medicine

Fall 2019
 
This 3-part seminar guides Medical Students and Residents in
  • close observation of art
  • group reflection and
  • art-making within the Art Gallery of Ontario’s collection — to let art tell us what we need to know about seeing, witnessing and engaging in the context of care. The gallery allows objects and images to clarify the doctor-patient relationship in ways the clinic can’t, giving us space to question and understand our roles with one another without the usual pressures to know, or perform, or explain.
Goals
  • Foster cognitive skills such as description and interpretation (and better understand the distinction between the two), critical thinking and metacognition
  • Sharpen technical abilities such as close observation, diagnostic acumen, pattern recognition and the perception of non-verbal cues
  • Deepen interpersonal skills with both patients and colleagues, such as collaboration, social awareness and cultural sensitivity
  • Nurture humanistic qualities such as tolerance of ambiguity, creativity and self-reflection
  • Understand the role of embodied witnessing in the practice of medicine.
Seminar leader
Eva-Marie Stern, RP, MA, Assistant Professor U of T Dept of Psychiatry, is an art therapist, psychotherapist and educator. She co-founded WRAP and the Trauma Therapy Program at Women’s College Hospital in 1998. Her chapter, co-authored with Shelley Wall, “The Visible Curriculum” appears in Health Humanities in Postgraduate Medical Education (Oxford University Press, 2018) and expands on how looking at and making art can vitalize learning in medicine. She offers art-based medical education initiatives in hospitals, museums and community studios.
 
Time and place
Wednesdays October 30, November 6, and November 13, 2019
6:30pm-8:30pm
Art Gallery of Ontario
 
Enrolment:
Open to all U of T Residents, Medical Students, and Learners from other clinical disciplines on a first-come, first-served basis. There is no cost for participation, but enrolment is required (see below)
ATTENDANCE IS EXPECTED AT ALL THREE SEMINARS/WORKSHOPS. MAKES SURE YOU CAN COMMIT AS THERE IS A WAIT LIST FOR THIS OFFERING.
 No art experience is necessary. Entrance to the Gallery and art supplies provided.
 
For more information and to register, please contact: emstern@artandmind.net