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

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