Masks, comics and the art of med school: Part one

Medicine is both science and art, yet the fast-paced and information-packed years of medical school often don ’t allow students to explore the value the arts and humanities can add to their personal and professional lives. At a military medical school in Maryland, one physician professor is injecting the arts into the curriculum to give students time for self-exploration so they are better prepared to not only help their patients, but also help themselves avoid burnout. And he does it through the making of masks.Students explore the ultimate question: Who am I? For three years now at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU), medical students, at a particular phase in the curriculum when they are at high risk for burnout, have taken part in a collaborative mask-making exercise to promote self-exploration and personal identity formation. The university ’s curriculum is a bit different than that of other medical schools. After 18 months of preclerkship, 12 months of clerkship, and a two-month study block for Step 1, students begin the mask-making exercise. Students are given blank masks and little direction other than examples of what previous students and veterans in the Wounded Warriors program have done. “We don’t want to tell them what should go on their masks,” said Mark Stephens, MD, a family physician and professor of family medicine at USU in Bethesda, Md. “That’s not our place, that is theirs…. As we frame the activity, we are ve...
Source: AMA Wire - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Source Type: news