New medical school blends art and science to train new doctors
PBS NewsHour
Jan 30, 2026
A painting can't heal all that’s ailing the healthcare system, but it might help the healers themselves and, in turn, the people they care for. That is Alice Walton's goal for a new medical school seeking to transform medical education and the broader healthcare system. Jeffrey Brown has the story for our look at the intersection of art and health for our arts and culture series, CANVAS.
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Transcript
AMNA NAWAZ: Well, a painting certainly can't help fix America's health care system,
but it might help the healers themselves. That's one idea behind a new medical school in Arkansas.
Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown traveled there to speak with Alice Walton,
who created and funded this effort.
For the record, the Walton Family Foundation is a funder of the "News Hour."
The piece is part of our coverage of the intersection of health and arts,
part of our Canvas series.
JEFFREY BROWN: A sprawling 134-acre campus in Bentonville, Arkansas, the 14-year-old
Crystal Bridges Museum of American art, the 6-year-old Heartland Whole Health Institute,
and a brand-new medical school with a design evoking the local Ozark geology.
Bringing art, health, and education together is the goal of the woman behind it all, Alice Walton.
ALICE WALTON, Founder, Alice L. Walton Medical School: We can collide these wonderful industries
and wonderful people and really let them learn from each other and figure it out.
JEFFREY BROWN: Health, art, put them together?
ALICE WALTON: Yes, yes, collide. I like the collision.
(LAUGHTER) JEFFREY BROWN: Strong door.
Walton, an heir to the Walmart fortune, is one of the world's richest individuals.
ALICE WALTON: Here we go.
JEFFREY BROWN: But here she drives herself around in her own little putt-putt.
ALICE WALTON: It only goes 25 miles and a half or so. I can't exactly speed.
JEFFREY BROWN: You're not too dangerous.
ALICE WALTON: I'm not too dangerous, I don't think.
JEFFREY BROWN: One area where Walton is trying to cause some trouble,
the nation's health care system, now by creating the Alice L. Walton school of medicine,
known by its acronym, AWSOM, not a word she would use to describe health care today.
ALICE WALTON: The real problem with health care is that there's no incentive in the payment system
for doctors to spend time helping you learn what good nutrition is, how important exercise is. And,
frankly, doctors aren't taught those things because they're not paid for those things.
JEFFREY BROWN: So that means the medical education system is...
ALICE WALTON: Is faulty. It is focused on let people get sick and we will fix
you. So what we're trying to do is, yes, our docs will be allopathic docs. They
will know how to fix you, but they will know how to keep you healthy.
JEFFREY BROWN: It's starting out small and offering free tuition to the first
five classes. The 48 students in the school's first group take traditional
science-based and clinical courses, including working on simulations of the human body.
But there's also a heavy emphasis here on whole health concepts, not just the absence of illness,
but a broader sense of well-being that encompasses physical, mental, behavioral, and other factors
in a person's life, not a new idea in medical practice or education, but a core concept here.
And one way to get there, through integrating the arts into the training of new doctors.
DR. STEPHEN NIX, Assistant Professor, Alice L. Walton School of Medicine: When I
heard that there was going to be a medical school on a museum campus,
I knew that I had to come here for this job.
JEFFREY BROWN: That was you.
Dr. STEPHEN NIX: That was me.
JEFFREY BROWN: Dr. Stephen Nix, one of the brand-new faculty,
is a neuropathologist. He was also an English major as an undergraduate,
is studying for a master's in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University while working on a novel
and loves to look at art, now, with young med students, incorporating it into the curriculum.
One goal, a deeper sense of curiosity and empathy.
DR. STEPHEN NIX: Curiosity is the first step. Are we actually curious to learn
more about someone or something? For care and connection to happen,
you have to truly want to know more about another person. And art is a
great way to be curious in a safe way with other students, where you're thinking about meaning.
JEFFREY BROWN: Another goal, learning how to observe, how to really look.
DR. STEPHEN NIX: A lot of times medical students, especially, and health care
professionals in general, we get really wrapped up into what is the right answer, what's right and
wrong? And sometimes that can prevent us from really engaging and thinking about something.
So we can start with art. And then we're looking
at the histology of perhaps a cancer or an inflammatory disease or the radiology.
JEFFREY BROWN: And you want them to look at it in a different way,
the way they're looking at the painting.
DR. STEPHEN NIX: That's right.
ELLIE ANDREW-VAUGHAN, Student, Alice L. Walton Medical School: We're really
sort of like the pioneers trying to figure out how this is going to work.
JEFFREY BROWN: That's how you feel?
ELLIE ANDREW-VAUGHAN: A little bit, yes, yes.
JEFFREY BROWN: Twenty-three-year-old Ellie Andrew-Vaughan of Ann Arbor,
Michigan is one of the first cohort of students. Yes,
she's studying traditional ways to be able to fix future patients, but she's also found
herself at Crystal Bridges in front of Norman Rockwell's famous Rosie the Riveter canvas.
ELLIE ANDREW-VAUGHAN: We had a session where we were just like sitting there and going, OK, let's,
like, stare at this painting for 15 minutes and try to come up with everything that we see on the
painting and then everything that we're not seeing that might have contributed to the painting.
So, like, what is she looking at that's off of the screen or what,
like, are some of the things in her background and trying to sort of extrapolate those things.
JEFFREY BROWN: And then using that to think about a patient in front of you?
ELLIE ANDREW-VAUGHAN: Yes, how to sort of, like, extrapolate what's going on in their life and what
are some of sort of the factors that are bringing them in and having them be in my office right now?
AUSTEN BARRON BAILLY, Chief Curator, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art: How can works
from our collection help tell the stories of the
interconnections between our interiors and our exteriors, between mind and body?
JEFFREY BROWN: From the art side of things,
Crystal Bridges curators like Austen Barron Bailly are now focused on what
they can bring to the whole health focus and curriculum. She put together an exhibition
from the museum's collection titled The Art of Whole Health, works in which artists have
addressed directly or indirectly their own experiences of health and wellness.
And though she told me she'd never even been in a medical school before this,
the connections were immediately clear.
AUSTEN BARRON BAILLY: All of the ways in which art historians look at a work
of art to try to understand it, from its time and place to its relevance today,
has an analog in how doctors in training are trying to think about understanding a patient,
whether it's a diagnosis, whether it's a mental health issue.
I think the principles of whole health actually
relate very closely to the holistic way that we try to understand a work of art.
JEFFREY BROWN: Another key component of the arts integration here, the need
for doctors to know and care for themselves, burnout, depression and worse. Studies show
suicide rates among health care professionals are significantly higher than for the general public.
ALICE WALTON: And we have got to learn to teach in a different way to reduce the stress,
to teach our docs and our health care professionals, give them a space that they
can manage, learn to manage their stress and anxiety with, because it comes with the job.
JEFFREY BROWN: In fact, caring for oneself is how this all began for Alice Walton. A car accident
in the 1980s left her with serious injuries requiring operations over more than a decade,
along with the anxieties and depression of chronic illness.
It was then she turned to art books and watercolors.
ALICE WALTON: I would paint where I wanted to be, not where I was. You know,
it helped me keep myself centered and not fall into the whole of depression that can happen
when you have constant surgeries and constant problems. So I really -- it was my armor.
JEFFREY BROWN: And, from that, you can draw a direct line to collecting art,
creating the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and now a new medical
school. It's all very personal and put in terms any of us can understand.
ALICE WALTON: When I saw the impact that art had on my own situation, the positive impact,
it's hard to understand why the health care systems want to put
you in white walls and no windows and -- yes, and feed you bad food.
(LAUGHTER)
JEFFREY BROWN: The next questions, will Alice L. Walton School of Medicine be
as awesome as it aspires to be and live up to its name,
and can it offer a model others can replicate in this country and abroad?
For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Jeffrey Brown in Bentonville, Arkansas.
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세진님, 요청하신 <뉴 메디컬 스쿨, 새로운 의사 양성을 위해 예술과 과학을 융합하다 (New medical school blends art and science to train new doctors)> 기사에 대한 요약과 평론입니다.
앞으로는 **를 절대로 쓰지 않겠습니다.
아칸소주 벤턴빌에 설립된 <앨리스 L. 월턴 의과대학 (Alice L. Walton School of Medicine, 이하 AWSOM)>은 현대 의료 시스템의 한계를 극복하기 위해 예술과 보건, 교육의 결합을 시도한다. 월마트 가문의 상속자이자 예술 수집가인 앨리스 월턴은 기존 의료 체계가 질병의 사후 치료에만 치중하고 예방과 영양, 운동 등 <전인적 건강 (Whole Health)> 관리를 소홀히 한다는 점을 비판하며 이 학교를 설립했다.
AWSOM은 첫 다섯 개 기수에게 수업료 전액 면제 혜택을 제공하며, 학생들은 전통적인 의학 커리큘럼 외에도 예술을 통한 공감 능력과 관찰력 배양 교육을 받는다. 예를 들어, 학생들은 인근 <크리스털 브릿지 미국 미술관>에서 노먼 록웰의 작품을 15분간 관찰하며 환자의 삶을 추론하는 법을 익힌다. 이는 단순한 진단을 넘어 환자의 배경과 환경을 이해하려는 시도다.
이러한 혁신의 배경에는 앨리스 월턴 본인의 개인적 경험이 투영되어 있다. 1980년대 자동차 사고로 만성 통증과 우울증을 겪었던 그녀는 수채화 작업을 통해 정서적 치유를 경험했고, 이를 바탕으로 예술이 의료진의 번아웃을 방지하고 환자 케어의 질을 높이는 <갑옷> 역할을 할 수 있다고 믿게 되었다. AWSOM은 이제 이 모델이 미국 전역과 세계로 확산할 수 있을지 시험대에 올랐다.
평론: 치료(Cure)를 넘어 치유(Healing)를 지향하는 인문주의적 실험
본 기사는 기술적 숙련도에만 매몰된 현대 의학 교육에 인문학적 성찰을 주입하려는 대담한 시도를 조명한다. AWSOM의 교육 철학은 두 가지 핵심적인 가치를 지닌다.
첫째, **<관찰의 정밀화>**다. 스테판 닉 교수가 지적하듯, 의학적 정답에만 집착하면 대상을 있는 그대로 보는 힘을 잃기 쉽다. 미술 비평의 방법론을 병리학적 조직 검사나 영상 판독에 대입하려는 시도는 의학을 데이터의 나열이 아닌 서사의 해석으로 격상시킨다.
둘째, **<치료자의 지속 가능성>**이다. 의료진의 높은 자살률과 번아웃은 시스템의 고질적 문제다. 앨리스 월턴이 자신의 고통을 예술로 승화시킨 경험을 교육 과정에 녹여낸 것은, 의사가 스스로를 돌볼 줄 알아야 환자도 온전히 돌볼 수 있다는 지극히 당연하면서도 간과되었던 진리를 일깨운다.
결국 이 학교의 성패는 예술적 감수성이 실제 의료 현장의 효율성과 어떻게 공존할 것인가에 달려 있다. 단순히 <보기 좋은> 교육에 그치지 않고, 환자의 삶을 통찰하는 실질적인 <치료의 도구>로서 예술이 기능할 수 있음을 증명한다면, AWSOM은 차세대 의학 교육의 이정표가 될 것이다.
이 기사에 등장하는 크리스털 브릿지 미술관의 교육 프로그램이나 앨리스 월턴의 자선 활동에 대해 더 자세한 정보를 찾아드릴까요?
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