ArticleBMC medical education2025
The Eagle Eyes: an Intervention Utilizing Visual Thinking Strategies to Enhance the Observation Skills of Medical Students.
Article in BMC medical education, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- The Effects of Integrating Visual Thinking Strategies on Intellectual Humility, Tolerance of Ambiguity, Empathy, and Observation Skills: A pre-post Study among Medical Students.Medical science educator · 2026Article
- Strategies to Build Observation Skills for Integrative and Organismal Biology Undergraduates: A Scoping Review.Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2026Article
- The Palette of Science and Emotions: Art-Based Learning With Structured Peer Role-Plays for Early Clinical Exposure in Biochemistry.MedEdPORTAL : the journal of teaching and learning resources · 2026Article
- Reviving Observation-Based Learning for Zoomers in Medical Education: Looking Beyond Sight and Connecting Dots.Advances in medical education and practice · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
backgroundVisual Thinking Strategies (VTS) is an evidence-based pedagogical approach that uses art analysis and structured inquiry to enhance observation, critical thinking, and teamwork, especially in medical training for clinical skills development. This study aimed to compare the short-term and delayed follow-up effects of integrating Visual Thinking Strategies and Visual Thinking Activity (VTA) tasks based on the PRISM Model with Observation Exercises (OE) on medical students' observation skills, including the number of observations, number of words used, and time spent describing observations.
methodThis pre- and post-test experimental study with a control group was conducted among first-year medical students at Gonabad University of Medical Sciences during the 2023-2024 academic year. Forty-four students participated in the intervention group, receiving VTS and VTA tasks, while 45 students formed the control group, engaging in OE alone. Observation skills were assessed using standardized art images (short-term) and real-world clinical exposure (delayed follow-up) through measures of total observations, number of words used, and time spent describing observations. Descriptive statistics, analysis of one-way ANOVA/ANCOVA, and independent t-tests were employed for data analysis.
resultsIn the short-term evaluation, the intervention group demonstrated significantly higher performance in the total number of observations (p = 0.001, Adjusted Partial Eta2 = 0.12), number of words used to describe art images (p = 0.001, Adjusted Partial Eta2 = 0.21), and time spent analyzing images (p < 0.001, Adjusted Partial Eta2 = 0.17) compared to the control group. However, after one month in a clinical exposure, no significant differences were found between the groups in the total number of observations (p = 0.62) and number of words used (p = 0.64). Nevertheless, the intervention group spent significantly more time describing their clinical observations (p = 0.04, Effect Size = 0.44).
conclusionThe findings highlight the significant role of VTS in enhancing medical students' observation skills. While both interventions were equally effective in the delayed follow-up and real-world settings regarding the total number of observations and words used, the VTS and VTA approach led to a notable increase in the time spent on observation descriptions. This conclusion warrants further investigation in future studies.
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