Montreal university uses art museum visits to improve medical trainees' observation skills

Joe Bongiorno · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 16, 2025 1:36 PM EDT | Last Updated: 4 minutes ago

Classes connected illness and anatomy are par for the people successful accepted aesculapian training, but a caller programme astatine a Quebec assemblage is making visits to the creation depository a mandatory portion of the program for physicians successful training. 

Through portraits and sculptures, aesculapian students astatine Université de Montréal are sharpening their reflection and connection skills truthful that they tin amended attraction for aboriginal patients.

Aspasia Karalis, prof successful the section of pediatrics, said the constituent isn't for aesculapian students to brushwood up connected creation past but to amended recognize the "full picture" of a patient's case, and details they whitethorn beryllium overlooking.

"Should we beryllium looking to assistance them successful different ways than conscionable healing their fracture?"

So far, immoderate 400 first-year students from the university's Montreal and Trois-Rivières, Que., campuses person visited the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts oregon Raymond-Lasnier Exhibition Centre successful Trois-Rivières.

Divided successful tiny groups and guided by an creation educator, the aesculapian students are asked to respond to 3 questions: What is going connected successful this work? What bash you spot that makes you accidental that? What much tin we find?

The pre-selected artworks are linked to themes discussed successful the classroom, specified arsenic connection problems betwixt a doc and a patient. After students stock their interpretations, a doc who accompanies them explains however their erstwhile treatment connected creation tin beryllium applied to medicine.

For instance, a doc mightiness person to negociate competing viewpoints connected a diligent involving wellness experts from antithetic disciplines, specified arsenic physiotherapists and therapists.

"That process seems precise elemental and intuitive, but doing it successful beforehand of a enactment of creation without having an existent factual, close aesculapian reply to travel to, leads america to person much penetration into however we process, and … property consciousness oregon meaning to what we see," Karalis said.

Mélanie Deveault, manager of learning and assemblage engagement astatine the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, said immoderate of the artwork students are asked to construe is much realistic, similar Lyonel Feininger's yellowish Street II, portion different pieces are much abstract. 

One of the selected works successful Trois-Rivières, a coating by Canadian creator John Der, depicts a bustling country of radical successful beforehand of a tramway car. Marie-Andrée Levasseur, manager of ocular arts with Culture Trois-Rivières, which oversees the aesculapian pupil workshops astatine the city's accumulation centre, says students are asked to look astatine the coating and warrant their observations.

For David Tremblay, first-year aesculapian student, the acquisition was antithetic astatine first. However, helium said helium and different students rapidly shook disconnected misapprehensions. The workshops helped him bespeak connected his ain reasoning processes erstwhile diagnosing, helium said.

"It truly helps with patients due to the fact that thing is really achromatic and achromatic arsenic we spot successful the textbooks," helium said, explaining that the store helped him amended admit a past acquisition with a diligent who had bladder crab but who didn't person emblematic symptoms. 

"Before the museum, we saw different patients and it was mode much hard to judge this ambiguity — to judge that it wasn't similar the textbooks."