New Electives During A Pandemic

by: Holly Gooding

With all of the Emory medical students displaced from the clinical environment due to the pandemic, we needed to urgently create new elective courses for them to pursue while learning remotely. I partnered with Dr. Hughes Evans and Dr. Mehul Tejani to create a four week elective focused on four weekly themes: the Role of the Healer, the Portrayal of Illness, the Social Determinants of Health, and Caring for Ourselves and Our Patients through Art. Dr. Evans led weekly discussions on each theme using films and narratives freely available through the Emory libraries. Dr. Tejani designed weekly interactive photography exercises based on the community based participatory action technique known as PhotoVoice. I led the students through a weekly Visual Thinking Strategies exercise using publicly available works of art from museum galleries around the world. Each student created their own work of art as the final cumulative project.