The art of medicine (courtesy Dr. Andy McLean)

George Bernard Shaw once said, “Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.”

Even physicians tend to agree, it seems. Two weeks ago, individuals from the local medical community gathered at a physician’s home in Fargo to view specific pieces of art as an exercise in observation. Sponsored by Plains Art Museum, the gathering was part of an ongoing effort to highlight the value of art in medicine. In the past year, such collaboration has included research on art and well-being, as well as education on the concept of social prescribing. There is the old saying, “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” So it is for practitioners who have access to treatments beyond medication to “heal the sick and relieve their suffering.” In some countries, providers literally write out “prescriptions” for diet, exercise, walks in nature, calling a friend, visiting family, reading a book. And they prescribe visits to free art museums.

Likewise, for many years our UND Psychiatry Residency Training program has provided a didactics course entitled “Film, Literature, and Art in Medicine.” One of the course’s sessions includes the Five Questions Protocol, developed by Stephanie Brown Clark, M.D., Ph.D., and Susan Dodge-Peters Daiss, M.A., M.Div., to help those in the healthcare sector enhance their observational, critical thinking, and diagnostic skills to become better practitioners.

All of this aligns with the Association of American Medical College’s (AAMC) interest in the so-called “medical humanities.” For years now the AAMC has managed a project called The Fundamental Role of Arts and Humanities in Medical Education (FRAHME). With FRAHME as the model, medical and nursing schools across the country are using art to improve students’ observational and descriptive skills. The literature suggests that such improved skills literary translate into better and more accurate diagnoses. The famous “Braverman” study, for example, demonstrated that students schooled in observation and description of visual art outperformed their control group colleagues in clinical exams.

For your own well-being and for the benefit of your patients, spend some quiet time looking at art, and reflect on these five questions and how their clinical and artistic uses overlap: