The transformative power of participating in Opening Minds Through Art (OMA), an expressive arts program for medical students

ABSTRACT

Opening Minds Through Art (OMA) is a standardized expressive arts-based program that improves student attitudes toward persons living with dementia. Understanding how this change occurs is important for both educators and clinicians. In this study, narrative analysis was used to explore the impact of OMA on participating medical students. 111 students at six medical schools accepted an invitation to be part of OMA during the 2018–2020 academic years. After completing the program, participants were asked to write briefly about the impact of their OMA experience on their work as future physicians. These narratives were analyzed to identify themes relevant to the impact of the program. Students described appreciating both pragmatic and novel creative experiences in OMA, which differed from their traditional studies. Themes from the evaluation included: Inter and Intrapersonal Connection and Growth; Mastery of Anticipated Challenges; Acquisition of Knowledge and Skills; and Appreciation of Health Care Team Members. Teaching students to embrace clinical work with challenging and perceived “difficult” patients is often unaddressed in the medical school curriculum. This study suggests that the combination of medical knowledge and artistic expression can be used to benefit both students and persons living with dementia.

KEYWORDS:

• Dementia
• arts
• medical humanities
• geriatrics
• intergenerational

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the following individuals, residents and staff for their collaboration on this research: Joel Kroft at Country Meadows; Jerry Devis and Dr. Charlie Farrell at The Farrell Foundation and staff members at Eliza Bryant; Bonnie Glass at Hooverwood; Nick Viti and Angie Hunt at the Cedars; Jessica Torda at the Ursuline Center; Sia Steel at Ohio Living; Andrea Banks at Friendship Village of Dublin; Karen Rice at Mayfair Village Nursing Center. We also thank our medical school partners for implementing OMA at their universities: Oliver Schirokauer, Martin Kohn and Sanjana Murali at Case Western Reserves University; Angela Wagner, Amy Skeels and Alex Waldher at Marian University; Andrea Brunson and Laura “Dannie” Roberts at Ohio University; Susan Wehry and Marilyn Gugliucci at the University of New England; and Shirley Bodi at the University of Toledo; Martha Levine and Tamika Washington at Penn State College of Medicine. We are especially grateful to the students at the above universities for their participation in OMA and in this study. We have consent from all mentioned to list them in the acknowledgments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

IRB approval

Ethics approval was obtained from institutional review boards at Miami University (Protocol ID No. 0005 r updated to No. 01900 r).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.