In Ontario, health care professionals are mandated to report suspected cases of child maltreatment. Yet, there is no standardized training in child maltreatment nor mandatory reporting for the pre-service professional. We will outline the evidence-based rationale for a McMaster-developed innovative arts-based course on child maltreatment for medical undergraduate students. We will describe course content, focusing on how the skills learned through art observation can be transferred to the clinical work of identifying and managing cases of child maltreatment. We will focus on the cognitive processing elements that are common to both art appreciation and clinical decision-making. The perspective of a course participant will be explored, along with the impact of the unique arts-based child maltreatment-related teaching on his work in the clinical setting. Finally, the results of before/after cognitive tests done by participants will be presented, illustrating the development of maltreatment-related knowledge and clinical observation and communication skills. We will end by describing the benefits of incorporating arts-based education into other areas of the clinical curriculum and the ways in which this has been done to date.
