Medical studentsÂ’ museum visit trains for later practice

Two small groups of medical students, most wearing their white coats and all sitting on small folding chairs, studied paintings in front of them at the Amon Carter Museum.

Despite appearances, though, the students were not in the museum to learn about art history or painting styles. Instead, they were there to learn about appearances.

There were about 16 students who visited the museum April 3 as part of the UNT Health Science Center’s “Eye for Detail” program in conjunction with the Amon Carter. The program is required for the first-year medical students, who visit in small groups during the fall and spring semesters to practice noticing visual clues of a patient’s appearance and environment.

Dr. Bruce Dubin, who leads the program and is associate dean for academic affairs at the Health Science Center, started taking over groups of students about seven years ago. In 2005 it became mandatory for first-year students, and he said while there are some other medical schools that offer similar programs, the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine is the only one to require it.

“A lot of physical diagnosis and the ability to be able to diagnose disease is based on your ability to observe and observe powerfully,” Dubin said.

Not only must a physician notice details that can give health clues, like skin coloring or posture, but he or she must also be able to communicate to other health professionals what is present, Dubin said.

“You have to be able to communicate what you see,” said Erin Long, a lead gallery teacher at the museum who facilitates groups (including the medical students) when they come through the collections. “That’s hard for fourth graders and that’s hard for med students.”

Each group has its own unique way of analyzing a piece of art, and Bridget Thomas, also a lead gallery teacher, said their answers often are colored by what they are studying across the street at the school. For example, a class in the middle of a neurology unit may see a subject as having a neurological disease. Environment also can affect a personÂ’s health, she said, and Dubin often prompts students to consider such factors.

“We’ll have a child holding a chicken and he’ll say, ‘Now, think about the environment,’” she said.

Shamin Masrour, one of the students who attended earlier this month, said the verbal analyses — presented as if the student were seeing a patient in the hospital and calling an attending physician to get advice — were difficult at first.

“At first, I didn’t know how much detail they wanted,” she said.

It seemed almost every detail had hidden meaning. A man with a yellowish tint in his skin from a 1919 painting by Stuart Davis could be recovering from the 1918 influenza pandemic. The pale sheen on the skin of Robert Louis Stevenson, depicted in a John Singer Sargent painting, was probably indicative of tuberculosis, which the author was suffering from at the time of the painting. The labels to each piece of art are covered while students analyze, and many struggled to describe “normal” details.

“When things are normal, it’s harder to put words to them,” Dubin said.

As part of their medical education, the students will spend time with practice patients as well as real patients on clinical rotations. Working with pieces of art is a chance for them to get out of the classroom and not be under pressure to perform perfectly or risk harming a patient, said Stacy Fuller, head of education for the Amon Carter Museum.

“It’s a safe place where you can diagnose

or guess and be wrong and try again,” she said.