noticing

“Art observation skills can transfer to the medical lab”

| Paul Greer

“If you’re unfamiliar or uncomfortable with how art and science can mingle to produce something clinically beneficial, it’s a study premise that might seem far-fetched — but it didn’t seem that way to Gurwin, an ophthalmology resident at Penn, in part because she’d already seen the benefits of art education on a medical career firsthand.

“Having studied fine arts myself and having witnessed its impact on my medical training, I knew art observation training would be a beneficial practice in medical school,” she said. “Observing and describing are skills that are taught very well in fine arts training, and so it seemed promising to utilize their teachings and apply it to medicine.”

“Gurwin and Binenbaum’s findings, published in the journal Ophthalmology in September: The medical students who’ve dabbled in art just do better.

“It’s a glimpse at how non-clinical training can and does make for a better-prepared medical professional. Not only does art observation training improve med students’ abilities to recognize visual cues, it also improves their ability to describe those cues.”

via

“Isaacson argues that Leonardo’s observational powers were not innate and that with sufficient practice, we can all observe as he did. People talk in a precious way about genius, creativity, and curiosity as superpowers that people are born with but noticing is a more humble pursuit. Noticing is something we can all do.”

also via

Masters of photography – Diane Arbus (documentary, 1972)

| Paul Greer

Someone must have sent me this or linked to it recently, because it was in my “watch later” list on the Youtubes.

I listened to it three times today already whilst working, I might listen to it again.

“Everybody has that thing when they need to look one way but they come out looking another way and that is what people observe.

You see someone on the street and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw.

It’s just extraordinary that we should be given these peculiarities and not content with what we were given we create a whole other set. Our whole guise is like giving a sign to the world to think of us a certain way.

But there’s a point between what you want people to know about you and what you can’t help people knowing about you, and that has to do with. what I have always called, the gap between intention and effect.”