This article is from 2008, but I think the courses described in it are still being used to help medical students improve their diagnostic skills. One course takes med students to the MFA to have them observe and discuss works of art. “After an hour at the museum, the class walked back to Harvard Medical School to apply what they had learned about examining art to diagnosing breathing problems, skin rashes, and neurological disorders.” For example, students “study texture and pattern in Jackson Pollack’s abstract Number 10, and then return to the medical school to study how patterns in patients’ rashes can indicate specific conditions.”
This kind of training has been shown to be effective: “students’ ability to make accurate observations increased 38 percent. When shown artwork and photos of patients, students were more likely to notice features such as a patient’s eyes being asymmetrical or a tiny, healed sore on an index finger. ”
An art observation course is already mandatory for students at Yale Medical School. Art training may become increasingly important, since “several studies show that doctors’ physical exam skills, which include observation and taking a medical history, as well as the hands-on examination, are declining.” This may be due to a over-reliance on diagnostic tests, which are also very expensive and raise the cost of care unnecessarily.
“‘When I’ve been to Africa and the Amazon and there are no CT scans and X-rays and it’s just you and a flashlight and a stethoscope and something to look into the patients’ ears, you have nothing to fall back on other than your clinical skills,’ said Dr. Ronald Silvestri […] In the United States […] doctors turn more quickly to these widely available tests and tend to be very rushed when seeing patients. ‘If you have a 10-minute visit, how good an observer can you be?'”
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