Stimulating situational awareness in healthcare through arts: An interdisciplinary and interprofessional continuous professional development training

Abstract

Continuous professional development (CPD) of healthcare professionals is essential to consistently meet patient and healthcare needs. Current CPD focuses on profession-specific knowledge and skills. However, changing health requirements of patients and society require CPD to evolve, with a focus on professional adaptive expertise. We developed a training for healthcare professionals to enhance the essential non-profession specific skill of situational awareness. This training crosses professional boundaries by learning in interprofessional teams and through interdisciplinary education with the arts, aiming to stimulate participants’ situational awareness. During the pilot, participants observed paintings applying Visual Thinking Strategies, with subsequently transferring their observations to colleagues. To evaluate this new teaching method, participants completed a post-training questionnaire. They reported increased awareness of different perspectives, enhanced attentiveness and improved observational skills. This innovative practice describes the development, implementation and evaluation of the training and closes with a critical reflection