The Visual Art to Improve Skills for Paediatrics Staff

Abstract

In healthcare working contexts, individuals are required to have a set of transversal skills that can be distinguished in technical-specialist, communicative-relational and organizational-management skills. This is the reason why interprofessional training has become a requirement in hospital wards. Art has been shown to be effective tools in educating medical students and healthcare professionals to a better self-awareness, reflective practice with the aim of better communication with the patient, better stress management, less burn-out etc. The aim of this study is to evaluate the use of art as a tool for the development of useful skills as observation, problem solving, critical thinking, communication, tolerance of ambiguity in paediatric practice.
 Method: The staff of the Umberto I paediatric department’s staff was chosen to be enrolled: 2 paediatricians, 3 nurses and 2 residents. A control group of 4 nurses and 1 resident was included in the study. The involved personnel participated in 4 to 8 one-hour meetings in two months. During these meetings, works of art were proposed by applying the method of Visual Thinking Strategies and other useful art practices to reinforce active listening and empathy. Validated test, VTSKill grid, was administered to evaluate the improvement of skills.
 Results: The comparison between pre and post-tests gave positive results in terms of Critical Thinking, Observation, Linguistic expression, problem solving and therefore analysis and communication skills. Same results were not recorded in the personnel who did not participate in the activities, registering in some cases a regression from the initial test.
 Conclusion: This experience, although realized with few participants, confirmed other experiences that have been suggesting Medical Humanities and in particular the Visual Art as a tool to improve useful skills and relationships within the staff of hospital departments. According to our experience, we believe improvement of some skills can be useful in the paediatric practice where the use of attentive listening, observation skills, communication through visual aids can improve the relationship with young patients and their families.