Object-based Learning: Teaching psychiatry and medicine with art

Background: Practicing as a good doctor extends beyond
knowing where to find a pulse, how to take a history or
what to ask to explore for symptoms of a mental disorder.
Professional practice requires self-awareness, capacity
for reflection, empathy, cultural awareness, powers of
observation and an ability to relate complexity, which
are not easily taught in medical school using traditional
methods. Conquering this ‘space in between’ makes
clinical practice easier – long understood to be of central
importance by therapists providing psychological therapies.
Groups of medical students can explore these concepts
in themselves in a non-threatening setting by examining
artworks (objects). Psychiatrists are well placed (although
not exclusively) conceptually to lead and engage students
in this type of exercise.
Objective: This practical seminar will describe what
object-based learning (OBL) is and review where it is being
applied in the tertiary setting, including in undergraduate
medicine in psychiatry teaching.
Method: Participants will learn about the application of
OBL and visit the nearby Flinders University City Gallery,
where they will have the opportunity to participate in a
practical exercise responding to ‘In the Saddle on the Wall’,
an exhibition comprising art works and digital stories of 13
senior Aboriginal artists from the Kimberley region.
Findings: Participants find this method of learning
enjoyable and worthwhile.
Conclusions: Learning from art objects has a place in
modern psychiatric and medical education and is easily
adapted by psychiatrists.
This is run as one symposium over two, 90-min parts.
The second part of the symposium will be a practical session held at Flinders University City Gallery, Ground Floor,
State Library of South Australia.