Art, Medicine, & Observation

(1 Credit Hour) · Undergraduate

The goal of Art, Medicine, and Observation is to employ the benefits of learning through works of art at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art in service of a humanistic study and practice of clinical medicine. This course positions the practice of medicine, like that of art, as a deeply human endeavor; it is the product of different types of person-to-person communication: patient and physician, physician and colleagues, physician and self, and physician and society and other contexts. By using works of art as “texts” through which to listen to, acknowledge, interpret, and respond to the experiences of others, this course will focus on building students’ skills of observation and communication as they relate to medical professions. Sustained encounters with works of art—specifically works with themes such as health and healing, caregiving, suffering, mortality, and the human body, among other topics that demonstrate what art and medicine have to offer each other—will surface issues of bias, objectivity, and ambiguity in observation and communication. Ultimately, this effort will lead students to develop an empathic disposition in their study of medicine, the capacity to think deeply about the experience of others, and the predilection to treat patients with care and attention. This one-credit class is co-led by Museum staff and an emergency medicine physician and runs for the first half of the semester only.