ABSTRACT
Enhancing Observational Skills is a collaborative museum tutorial now in its fourteenth year between the Yale School of Medicine (YSM) and the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA), both in New Haven, Connecticut. Each spring, first-year medical students visit the YCBA in groups of 20 and then are divided into five groups of four students each with a facilitator from the museum or medical school. Once students have completed the visual inventory of details in the painting, they are asked to provide conclusions and/or interpretations of the narrative presented in which several interpretations are possible. Nursing students who visited the museum as part of the intervention subsequently wrote more about what they saw in post-tests, resulting in significantly more objective clinical findings when reviewing patient photographs. Students are told they are in the museum to participate in a looking activity to improve their observational skills.
