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

Welcome Remarks and Introductions 

Theme: The power of the arts for the health professions. Introduction to Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS). 

VTS facilitation and reflection led by faculty. Experience and unpack Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS). Discuss research and relevance to health care. 

Practice Breakouts: Small group, faculty-led workshops to practice VTS facilitation. Students lead VTS discussions with guidance and feedback from an expert. 

Technical focus: Students begin to understand the structure of the VTS methodology and techniques, in particular the three carefully worded VTS questions and how to use them. Introduction to the VTS@Work® rubric. Reflections focus on how the experience as a whole connects to each student's professional context. 

Welcome & Announcements 

Guest Speaker: Margaret Chisolm, MD, Professor, Johns Hopkins Medicine 

Theme: Continue the introduction to VTS with a focus on clinical practice. Deepen understanding of the methodology, its techniques and design. VTS and Clinical Reasoning, Research, and Scholarship. 

VTS facilitation and reflection led by faculty. Continue unpacking the methodology and how its techniques build skills and mindsets fundamental to effective clinical practice and patient outcomes. 

Practice Breakouts: Small group, faculty-led workshops, to practice VTS facilitation. Students lead VTS discussions with guidance and feedback from an expert. 

Technical focus: Each student begins to understand the structure of the VTS methodology and develop their skills, in particular the three carefully worded VTS questions and how to use them. Reflections focus on how the experience as a whole connects to clinical reasoning and each student's professional context. 

Welcome & Announcements 

Theme: Explore how VTS can be used to make thinking visible, help us embrace and navigate uncertainty, and recognize the value of a range of lenses and types of thinking in diagnostic and other workplace processes. 

VTS facilitation and reflection led by faculty. Discussion of thinking behaviors within students' professional contexts and how VTS skills and techniques support valued ways of thinking. 

Practice Breakouts: Small group, faculty-led workshops to practice VTS facilitation. Students lead VTS discussions with guidance and feedback from an expert. 

Technical focus: Paraphrasing using conditional language, framing and linking; using Question 2 to elicit supportive evidence and to deepen thinking, moving beyond assumptions; navigating ambiguity. 

Applying in Workflow: Guidelines for final projects; Deepen understanding of 6 Questions for integrating VTS; Q&A.

Guest Speaker: Neal Baer, MD, Co-Director, Master of Science in Media, Medicine, and Health, Harvard Medical School 

Theme: Listening to patient’s narratives; Introduction to Dr. Helen Riess's Seven Keys of E.M.P.A.T.H.Y.® Explore how VTS can be used to develop and support empathic communication. 

VTS facilitation and reflection led by faculty. Discussion of empathic communication skills and their role within healthcare environments. Connect these skills to creating respectful work and patient care environments. Explore how VTS can be used to support empathic communication. 

Practice Breakouts: Small group, faculty-led workshops to practice VTS facilitation. Students lead VTS discussions with guidance and feedback from an expert. 

Technical focus: Active listening, listening to understand, nonverbal communication, and deepening all aspects of paraphrasing. 

Applying in Workflow: Guidelines for image and stimulus selections. 

Guest Speaker: Sara E. Hart, PhD, RN, Professor, College of Nursing, University of Utah

Theme: Introduction to research on psychological safety and its impact on interprofessional team dynamics and workplace outcomes, including diagnostic accuracy, innovation, patient experience, and more. 

VTS facilitation and reflection led by faculty. Discussion of what characterizes a psychologically safe climate, our roles and responsibilities, and how VTS skills can support workplace environments in which team members know their voices will be respected, valued and heard. 

Practice Breakouts: Small group, faculty-led workshops to practice VTS facilitation. Students lead VTS discussion with materials they submit and receive guidance and feedback from an expert. 

Technical focus: Understanding the VTS stance and how the facilitation protocol nurtures mindsets and behaviors including non judgment, curiosity, and self-awareness. 

Applying in Workflow: Faculty-led small breakouts focused on Final Projects and applying VTS techniques going forward.

Guest Speaker: Kamna Balhara, MD, Johns Hopkins University Medical School; Philip Yenawine, MA, Founder, Visual Thinking Strategies 

Theme: Case study focused on using VTS in Johns Hopkins's ER Residency Program to promote antiracism and address other forms of bias. 

VTS facilitation and reflection led by faculty. Discussion on types of bias and how VTS can help mitigate bias during workplace and clinical interactions, diagnostic processes and with hospital teams. 

Practice Breakouts: Small group, faculty-led workshops to practice VTS facilitation. Students lead VTS discussion with materials they submit and receive guidance and feedback from an expert. 

Technical focus: Surfacing biases/assumptions in ourselves and others; how the nuances of paraphrasing and the VTS stance can support more respectful and inclusive work environments. 

Applying in Workflow: FACULTY Q&A, Reflection on Anti-Racism 

Themes: Overcoming barriers to having difficult conversations. Calling in practices, VTS skills/mindsets and facilitative leadership. 

VTS facilitation and reflection led by faculty. Discussion of the connection between VTS and navigating potentially challenging conversations and/or differences of opinion with respect and dignity; the importance of ongoing leadership for creating inclusive workplace cultures. 

Discussion of the connection between VTS and leadership skills, and the importance of ongoing leadership for creating inclusive workplace cultures. 

Practice Breakouts: Small group, faculty-led workshops to practice VTS facilitation. Students lead VTS discussion with materials they submit and receive guidance and feedback from an expert. 

Technical focus: Students identify aspects of the methodology they would like feedback on. 

Applying in Workflow: FACULTY Q&A, Reflection on Anti-Racism, Difficult Conversations. 

Guest Speakers: Brooke DiGiovanni Evans, MEd, Director of Visual Arts Education Center for Visual Arts in Healthcare at Brigham & Women’s Hospital; Ray Williams, MEd Director of Education and Academic Affairs, The Blanton Museum, University of Texas, Austin 

Theme: Partnering with art museums. Guidelines for how to collaborate with museum educators and curators. Curricular design and examples of VTS in the context of undergraduate medical education and a humanistic curriculum for interns and residents. 

Practice Breakouts: Small group, faculty-led workshops to practice VTS facilitation. Students lead VTS discussion with materials they submit and receive guidance and feedback from an expert. 

Technical focus: Students identify aspects of the methodology they would like feedback on. 

Applying in Workflow: Project Breakouts. Small group in-session work with faculty on final projects. 

Theme: Understanding leadership as a stance of engagement and learning enroll instead of command and control. Consider leadership moments, not just roles, and how curious, supportive leadership manifests within healthcare teams and can support positive patient outcomes.  

VTS facilitation and reflection led by faculty. Discussion of research on facilitative leadership and connections to VTS skills and mindsets. 

Practice Breakouts: Small group, faculty-led workshops to practice VTS facilitation. Students lead VTS discussion with materials they submit and receive guidance and feedback from an expert. 

Technical Focus: Students identify aspects of the methodology they would like feedback on. 

Applying in Workflow: Project Breakouts: Small group in-session work with faculty on final projects. 

Guest Speaker: Cheryl Giscombé, PhD, RN, PMHNP-BC, FAAN, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Nursing 

Theme: Compassion in the Workplace 

VTS facilitation and reflection led by faculty. Discussion of research about the role of compassion and mindfulness in the workplace to address burn-out and how VTS can support a culture of well-being. Connections to VTS. 

Practice Breakouts: Small group, faculty-led workshops to practice VTS facilitation. Students lead VTS discussion with materials they submit and receive guidance and feedback from an expert. 

Technical Focus: Students identify aspects of the methodology they would like feedback on. 

Applying in Workflow: Project Breakouts: Small group in-session work with faculty on final projects. 

Student Presentations: Students will present their final projects detailing goals, objectives, and outcomes for integrating VTS into their workflows (in concrete, specific ways over time.) Each presentation will be followed by faculty feedback and a Q&A session with faculty and peers. 
 
VTS facilitation and reflection led by faculty. Final VTS discussion and reflection, spiraling back through all course topics and outcomes. Shared reflection and feedback.  

Student Presentations are not eligible for credit.