Abstracts

Rationale: Medical education has increasingly embraced the incorporation of the arts and humanities. Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) is an established, researched methodology of facilitating audience-driven conversations about artwork. VTS in medical education has demonstrated improvements in observation skills with medical students. Studies of VTS for practicing physicians are lacking, and incorporating both VTS and musical performances together may provide added benefits. We developed an eight-part virtual workshop series incorporating VTS, musical performances, and lectures for medical professionals with the goal of increasing observation and communication skills and building resiliency through visual arts and music, particularly during a major pandemic.

Methods: The AiMES for MDs Spring 2021 program featured a series of eight one-hour sessions over the course of eight weeks. Sessions consisted of VTS discussions about eight different works of art, four arts-in-medicine lectures, and six musical performances by soloists from the Longwood Symphony Orchestra.

We recruited registered participants from the AiMES for MDs Spring 2021 program through advertising at institutions and through professional organizations. Exclusion criteria were individuals who declined survey participation. For data analysis, participants completed a pre- and post-course survey using a five-point Likert scale. Responses were matched and analyzed by two-tailed paired student’s t-tests with significance considered at p < 0.05. Boston Children’s Hospital Institutional Review Board determined this study exempt.