The Art of Medicine: Applying the Visual Thinking Strategy to Radiology

Objective: The purpose of this project was to develop a formal visual arts training curriculum and evaluate if there was improvement in the observational and descriptive skills of first- and second-year medical students for radiologic images. Materials and methods: A demographic survey and an initial pre-test of 12 radiologic images were administered asking an open-ended question to describe the image and to identify the abnormality in their own words. Three virtual one-hour sessions of visual thinking strategy (VTS) training occurred, and an immediate post-test and a six-month post-test were administered, each with images different from the pretest, as well as a final questionnaire. All tests were independently graded by two graders with a previously established grading rubric. Differences in scores were analyzed using paired T-tests. Results: Thirty-nine medical students participated. The mean pre-test score was 62.2 +/18.6, and the mean post-test score improved by 41.7 +/17.9 points (p<0.01) to an average score of 103.9 +/20.4. Nine participants were lost to follow-up at six months, and the average six-month post-test score was 110.2 +/29.1 for a mean improvement of 9.3 +/13.1 points (p=0.320) from the initial post-test. Conclusion: There was a significant improvement in observational and descriptive skills in first- and second-year medical students when describing radiologic images, which was retained after six months. A formal VTS curriculum could play a beneficial role in medical student and radiology training programs not only to improve observational skills but also to address perceptual errors in diagnostic imaging.