Training our Eyes, Minds and Hearts: Visual Thinking Strategies for Health Care Professionals

Course Overview

This course, the first accredited continuing education activity of its kind, trains health care professionals at all levels to facilitate and apply Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) techniques and mindsets in classrooms, meetings, clinics, and hospitals. Learning and applying VTS strengthens humanistic and analytic competencies and can transform medical education, patient care, teamwork, equity, and professional growth. Due to the highly experiential nature of this course, we strongly recommend participants attend the majority of classes in real time. 

VTS is a methodology for leading and participating in discussions about complex, ambiguous materials. Developed in art museums, it has spread to education, health care, and the business world. Harvard Medical School’s ongoing course, Training the Eye: Improving the Art of Physical Diagnosis, pioneered the application of VTS within medical education in 2004, and the method is now applied at more than thirty medical schools.

Peer-reviewed studies demonstrate that VTS helps health care educators, leaders, and providers to:

• Hone observation, critical thinking, active listening, and communication skills.
• Develop tolerance for uncertainty.
• Create psychologically safe environments that promote inclusion and belonging.
• Facilitate difficult conversations.
• Surface and mitigate assumptions and biases.
• Cultivate a reflective practice of metacognitive awareness, mindfulness, and wellness.

This course has two interwoven through-lines: 1) Regular VTS facilitation practice and feedback, and 2) connecting the skills and mindsets of VTS to key topics in health care, including: critical thinking, empathic communication, bias mitigation, health equity, psychological safety and interprofessional teaming, facilitative leadership, and well-being.

Learning to facilitate VTS discussions effectively and fluidly requires practice and feedback over time. A crucial aspect of the course is its longevity, which allows for durable skill development. In every class session, we will practice VTS in small, inter-professional breakout groups, each with an expert VTS coach, to deepen community, self-awareness, and reflective capacities. Each course participant will have multiple opportunities to practice and receive individual feedback. We will learn VTS by exploring works of art and other health care-related materials.

In addition to becoming a proficient VTS facilitator, participants will develop a final project detailing how they will implement VTS in their professional work going forward. The course offers VTS@Work® certification if participants demonstrate proficiency as facilitators and meet all requirements. The certification rubric is evidence-based and focused on VTS application within workflow.

Schedule at a Glance

Wednesdays, 11am - 2pm EST, on the following dates:

• Oct 8 - Introduction to VTS
• Oct 22 - Clinical Practice
• Nov 5 - Thinking
• Nov 19 - Empathic Communication; Guest Speaker: Neal Baer, MD
• Dec 3 - Teams & Psychological Safety; Guest Speaker: Sara Hart, PhD, RN
• Dec 17 - Anti-Racist Education; Guest Speakers: Kamna Balhara, MD, MA; Philip Yenawine, MA
• Jan 7 - Conversations Across Differences
• Jan 21 - Creating Partnerships with Museums; Guest Speakers: Brooke DiGiovanni Evans, MEd; Ray Williams, MEd 
• Feb 4 - Facilitative Leadership
• Feb 18 - Well-Being; Guest Speaker: Cheryl Giscombé, PhD, RN, FAAN
• March 3 - Bringing It All Together and Project Presentations

^{*We understand busy schedules. If you need to miss a class, all sessions will be recorded.}

Who Should Attend

• Primary Care Physicians
• Specialty Physicians
• Nurses
• Nurse Practitioners
• Pharmacists
• Physician Assistants
• Psychologists

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this activity, participants will be able to:

• Recognize the relevance and value of VTS for workplace application and be able to communicate that value to colleagues.
• Critically reflect on their own thinking patterns, values, assumptions, and mindsets.
• Practice the basics of image selection.
• Propose a plan to build a partnership with an Art Museum.
• Present a well-reasoned plan to improve education and/or clinical care that their own institution. 
• Develop a network of interprofessional colleagues who can provide support for future work in this field.