At Mount Sinai School of Medicine art-appreciation is a required course for third-year students. The class not only gives students a Leonardo-esque appreciation for the human form, but also increases their ability to view the entire scope of a patient.

A 2001 study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association reported that medical students who study painting and sculpture have improved observational abilities. Dr. David Muller, Mount Sinai's chairman of medical education, calls this the "art of looking." "To make a better doctor means to me - and I can't speak for everyone - one who sees the person and not just the patient," he told the New York Times, "not just an organ system that is screwed up."

The Mount Sinai course is taught by art educator Rebecca Hirschwerk who specifically chooses paintings and sculpture that are less well known so students will have to become acquainted with each piece for the first time. A recent visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City included stops in front of a Dutch Baroque work by Gerard ter Borch and Giacometti's "Three Men Walking II."

"I can't think of many places outside art where you can be in a moment, and just look, for as long as you can take it," she said. "Think about what it would be like if you were with a patient and could freeze the moment to really pay attention to everything that patient was trying to tell you. It's hard to do when you have only 15 minutes with patients, 20 times a day."

Similar art course are taught at Yale, Stanford, and Cornell.

[via New York Times]

Image: Gerard Ter Borch's "A Lady dressing her Hair" via wallacecollection.org