Healer’s Art in the Online Era: Successes, Challenges, and Implications

Abstract

Purpose: Healer’s Art (HART), a health professional elective course, shifted to online platforms during the pandemic year (2020–2021). Because HART focuses on affective domain aspects of such education, the question arose of its validity and efficacy in the online format. This study aimed to identify challenges and experiences of online versus in-person HART learners. Methods: The authors compared students’ end-of-course evaluations between in-person and online cohorts across 3 years. The evaluations included Likert scale responses compared between cohorts with Fisher’s exact tests. Novel questions with narrative responses in the online cohort’s evaluation captured information on challenges with the online platform. Narrative responses were analyzed using constant comparative analysis. Results: No difference was found between in-person (n = 654) and online cohorts (n = 570) in ratings of good/excellent for the overall course (1111/1203, 92.4%), course faculty (1184/1214, 97.5%), and small group experience (1142/1208, 94.5%). Thematic analysis of narrative responses indicated that online HART engagement supported student development of community, professional identity formation, self-care, and relationships. Conclusions: The findings suggest that HART effectively supports affective domain learning in medical and health professional students whether delivered in-person or online. The authors share challenges and successes of online HART, thus increasing the delivery versatility of this course.