The role of online arts and humanities in medical student education: a mixed methods study of effectiveness and perceived impact of a one-week online course (Preprint)

BACKGROUND The arts and humanities have been integrated into medical student education worldwide. Integrated arts and humanities courses have been found to serve four primary functions: mastering skills, perspective-taking, personal insight, and social advocacy. To what extent and how arts and humanities programs achieve these educational outcomes remains unclear. OBJECTIVE In this study, we aimed to explore how the arts and humanities may lead to perceived benefits in clinical skills development, professional identity formation, and self-care and to evaluate the feasibility of delivering an arts and humanities-based course online. METHODS We developed and delivered a one-week online arts and humanities course to second- through fourth-year medical students. The course was primarily visual arts-based, but also included other arts and humanities-based activities, such as literature, reflective writing, dance, film, music, philosophy, and religion. Student engagement in and the perceived benefits of each activity, and the course as a whole, were assessed via daily polls and a post-course survey, respectively, using a mixed-methods approach. RESULTS Ninety-three percent of students rated all activities as good or excellent in daily course polls. Themes around both the functions and the form of the course emerged from the qualitative analysis of student responses to the open-ended items on the post-course survey. Functional themes centered around three topics: skills development, appreciation of new perspectives, and personal inquiry; formal themes concerned the overall course design and its online format. CONCLUSIONS Consistent with previous studies, results suggested that the arts and humanities may promote skills development, appreciation of new perspectives, and personal inquiry. A more unique finding was that when delivered online, these programs – including those that are primarily visual arts-based – can engage students and potentially yield benefits. Future studies with larger sample sizes drawn from multiple institutions and led by other facilitators are recommended to support these findings.