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Background: General practitioners (GPs) and other health professionals have a key role in signposting their patients to appropriate opportunities for engaging in arts and creative activities for the health and wellbeing benefits they may bring. Training is needed to ensure that GPs are aware of the evidence supporting the role of the arts, and the local availability of ‘creative arts for health’ activities for their patients. Aim: This article describes the content and evaluation of three arts and health training events for trainee GPs conducted over the period 2016–2019. They took place in association with Guy’s and St Thomas, Hillingdon and York and Scarborough General Practice Vocational Training Schemes (GPVTS). Methods: Evaluation was undertaken for the London events using a specially constructed questionnaire, with rating scales, completed before and after the training events. For the York event, a simple bespoke evaluation questionnaire was employed at the end of the training day. All participants gave consent for photography and filming during the events. Results: Feedback from GPs on the training events revealed increased awareness of the evidence for arts and health interventions, and more positive attitudes towards the role of creative arts in primary care in promoting the health and wellbeing of patients. An additional finding was a recognition by GP trainees that creative activities can enhance a holistic approach to patient care and play a positive part in supporting their own wellbeing. Conclusion: Training events of the kind described, with opportunities for creative participation for GP trainees, can enhance awareness of the benefits of creative activity for patient health and wellbeing, and may motivate future GPs to signpost patients towards opportunities for engaging in creative activities. This training model is applicable for any health worker who can refer patients to arts for health activities and has potential to be scaled up nationally.

Objectives In this new era of educational milestones and entrustable professional activities, residency programs have recognized the need to directly observe resident performance. In fact, there is little information about how often residents are observed, what procedures they perform early in training, and whether they receive feedback. Previous publications have addressed these issues exclusively through retrospective survey analyses. The purpose of this naturalistic point-of-care study was to answer the following questions about obstetrics/gynecology (OB/GYN) residents in their second month of training: what activities do residents report performing, how often are they observed and who observes them, how often do they receive feedback and what is their perception of its usefulness, and does the time of shift affect the frequency of observation and feedback? Methods Nine of 10 first-year OB/GYN residents at George Washington University Hospital participated in a month-long study during their second month of training. Based on point-of-care experiences, participants prospectively recorded the time of shift, activities performed, the person who observed them, whether they received feedback, and whether it was perceived as helpful. Results First-year OB/GYN residents (postgraduate year 1 [PGY-1]) perform a variety of activities early in training while being observed by senior residents, nurses, and attending physicians 70% of the time. Residents commented that feedback was helpful almost every time they received it, regardless of who provided the feedback. There were no significant differences in the quantity of observations and feedback received between day and night shifts; however, nurses and senior residents were most likely to observe residents during night shifts. Conclusions In this naturalistic pilot study, OB/GYN residents reported performing various procedures in their second month of training, with some observations from faculty, senior residents, and nurses. Feedback, as defined in the study, is an important aspect of their early training, although it is not reported with each patient encounter. This pilot study raises critical issues that need further study, such as the following: What should be the gold standard for observing residents around a particular activity? Where should the bar be set for types and numbers of procedures that residents perform early on in training, either with patients or in simulations? What is an acceptable feedback rate around patient encounters? Should we not consider training nurses and senior residents to deliver effective feedback to residents as part of a 360-degree process, because many trainees were observed most frequently by these members of the medical team?