![\"A](\"https:\/\/news.furman.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/Sarah-Archino-Prisma-art-class-doctor.jpg\")
<\/a>Rachel Downs, M.D., a resident at Prisma Health, participates in a visual literacy workshop.<\/p><\/div>\n
Funded by a grant from Prisma Health, the project is a collaboration between Archino and Dr. Joy Shen-Wagner, a family medicine physician at Prisma Health who has a dual appointment as an assistant professor at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville (USCSMG). She helps train resident physicians through Prisma Health\u2019s Family Medicine Program.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the world of increasing technology, we have to guard against becoming potentially distanced from our patients,\u201d says Shen-Wagner. \u201cThis exercise will hopefully help physicians in training focus their attention on the patient in front of them either in person or via the telehealth realm.\u201d<\/p>\n
The project is important because a health care provider may look at a patient and make certain assumptions that can influence the diagnosis, Archino says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are things you might be interpreting based on your own experiences and prior knowledge and you may not be aware that you\u2019re making an interpretive leap,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
For example, she says, someone may look at Rodin\u2019s \u201cThe Thinker\u201d and conclude he has a curved spine. Or they may decide he is anxious or depressed based on the tension evidenced in the body position.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you look at this work, what do you notice?\u201d she says. \u201c(If you) say he looks anxious, before just accepting that as a fact \u2026 you need to be able to say what makes (you) say that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Studies show that visual literacy participants are more likely to entertain additional possibilities for a diagnosis before drawing a conclusion, she says. It also helps providers become more aware that looking is a complicated, subjective and messy process.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat leads to the kinds of benefits that can make a real difference in patient care,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
In addition to viewing artwork, the 18 medical residents in the project will attend a workshop and a simulated patient encounter via telemedicine \u2013\u00a0half before the patient encounter and half afterward, and then be asked to make diagnoses and compare the differences, Archino says.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere it\u2019s a learning experience,\u201d she says, \u201cbut it\u2019s parallel to what they would do in the real world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shen-Wagner says medical students will be open to the idea, especially if it\u2019s done early in their training \u201cbefore they become set in their practice patterns.\u201d<\/p>\n
The $6,122 grant will fund two summer research fellows \u2013 Furman student Chloe Coffindaffer \u201923 and USCSMG student Rebecca Bernstein \u2013 as well as development of the workshop and tools to measure success, says Archino.<\/p>\n
Coffindaffer says that so far, she\u2019s been learning about telemedicine to gain insight that will help with the workshop.<\/p>\n
Though she\u2019s an art history major, she wanted to be involved in the research because she\u2019s also on the pre-med track with an eye on becoming a plastic surgeon or dentist, and the project links the two fields. And as part of her training she\u2019s been shadowing a plastic surgeon to get an inside view of the specialty.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe plastic surgeon I\u2019m shadowing is into art and claims it has helped her in her field,\u201d says Coffindaffer. \u201cAnd I personally believe it will help in reading scans, any type of patient assessment, to see colors better, lines better, shapes better. We\u2019re also trying to make a survey at the end (of the project) to see if the students come through this program with a more open mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Archino was a 2019 fellow of Furman\u2019s Institute for the Advancement of Community Health, which awarded her an earlier grant to do the foundational research for this study.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s often said that medicine is as much art as it is science. Now Furman University\u2019s art department is embarking on a visual literacy project that aims to produce better […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":389,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,45,17,65,76],"tags":[301,996,997,998,207,208],"class_list":["post-9503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-art","category-centers-and-institutes","category-institute-for-the-advancement-of-community-health","category-top-four-news-3rd-story","tag-art","tag-iach","tag-institute-for-the-advancement-of-community-health","tag-prisma-health","tag-student-research","tag-undergraduate-research"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/389"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9503\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}