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Table 1 “The Visual Arts and Medicine” course modules, digital tools, and art creation activities

From: Design, implementation, and reflections on a two-week virtual visual arts and medicine course for third- and fourth-year medical students

Module

Objectives

Digital Tools

Art Activity

(1) Ambiguity and Observation

Improve observational and visual literacy skills through visual arts engagement.

Engage with ambiguity intrinsic to visual art and discuss its implications.

Zoom

Google Jamboard

Canvas

(2) Graphic Medicine and Patient Narrativea

Appreciate the role graphic narrative can play in conveying stories of illness.

Explore the ways graphic medicine can be used as a form of art therapy for patients diagnosed with physical and mental ailments.

Create a graphic medicine storyboard and a healthcare comic to learn about the importance of narrative in medicine.

Zoom (+ breakout rooms)

Google

Jamboard

Canvas

Comic Strip Creation

(3) The Visual Arts and Medical Education

Review the role for incorporating the visual arts and medical humanities into medical education.

Engage in visual literacy exercises.

Discuss some of the ways the arts can be used to complement clinical practice (e.g., tolerance for ambiguity, developing a moral imagination, illuminating bias, etc.).

Zoom

Canvas

(4) Bias and the Visual Artsa

Explore how the visual arts depict and make the viewer aware of conscious and unconscious bias.

Discuss the implications of bias in clinical medicine.

Use photovoice to illuminate bias.

Zoom

Google Jamboard

Canvas

Photovoice

(5) The Visual Art of Pandemicsa

Appreciate artists who experienced and responded to global pandemics using the visual arts.

Engage in virtual painting lessons to learn basic painting skills including subject choice, composition, color mixing, and brush techniques.

Participate in a virtual art show and discuss the arts role for encouraging reflection and cultivating resiliency.

Zoom (+ breakout rooms)

Canvas

Virtual Painting Studio + Art Show

(6) Depictions of Health and Illness in Visual Art

Explore the visual representations of illness, health, and disease by artists who grappled with various medical diagnoses.

Appreciate how larger sociocultural themes including poverty, scientific advances, and inequality manifest themselves in various visual artworks.

Zoom

Canvas

(7) Art Therapy for Patients and Providers

Introduce students to art therapy’s role in building resilience and fostering healing/wellness in patients and providers.

Engage in a hands-on art therapy activity.

Zoom (+ breakout rooms)

Canvas

Kintsugi + Art Show

  1. aModules conducted over two sessions