Impact of Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) on the Analysis of Clinical Images: A Pre-Post Study of VTS in First-Year Medical Students

To assess the effectiveness of Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) in medical education curricula, a pretest–posttest experimental study design was used to evaluate the impact of participating in VTS workshops on first-year medical students. A total of forty-one intervention and sixty comparative students completed the study which included the analysis of clinical images followed by a measurement of word count, length of time analyzing images, and quality of written observations of clinical images. VTS training increased the total number of words used to describe clinical images, the time spent analyzing the images, and the number of clinically relevant observations.