Whole personhood in medical education: Visual thinking strategy, close reading, and creative practice with a diversity and equity lens

Purpose

To create and implement a Whole Personhood in Medical Education curriculum including Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), close reading, and creative practice that features creative works by BIPOC, persons with disability, and/or LGBTQ + individuals that aligns with educational competencies.

Materials and methods

Curriculum design by an interdisciplinary team made up of physician educators, medical sociologist, digital collection librarian, and art museum educators. Prospective single arm intervention study at a single site academic teaching hospital. Utilized pre-post surveys using the Interpersonal Reflexivity Index (IRI) scale on perspective taking, an internally developed ordinal scale survey on arts integration and bias recognition, and open-ended questions for qualitative analysis.

Results

A total of 161 participants responded and showed statistically significant increases in their mean scores in perspective-taking (4.7%), empathic concern (1.8%), the perceived value of art in medical education (15.8%) and recognizing bias (6.1%). In all subscales, non-white students saw bigger increases than white students, and in three of four subscales, females showed higher increases than males. Qualitative analysis of free text responses (n = 308) showed three emergent themes: (1) increased community; (2) recognition of bias in personal, interpersonal, and system levels; and (3) increased awareness of application of empathy and perspective taking in health settings.

Conclusions

Incorporating a required curriculum that features art and written narratives by minoritized groups and utilizes close observation/reading and reflective/creative practice, leads to an enhanced medical education experience. The curriculum leads to statistically significant increase in individuals’ ability to identify bias, recognize perspectives different than their own, and be empathetic toward others.