The use of arts in Japanese health professions education has received increasing attention. This paper provides an overview of arts-integrated learning and related concepts, including medical humanities. It also discusses the benefits of using arts as a new teaching method. The benefits include facilitating the understanding of the human condition-such as involvement in medicine and disease-with emotion, including empathy, through case studies and cultivating perspective-taking and critical perspectives. Further, the use of arts helps to encourage learning in diverse contexts for transfer (application) to clinical practice, fostering values regarding medicine, nurturing a research mindset, facilitating an integrative understanding using creative methods, and enabling students to experience the usefulness of arts in medicine.

　The number of students with disabilities is increasing in healthcare and other fields. However, support systems have yet to progress, and faculty and staff often find it difficult in the field. About 10% of medical students in the United States report that they have a disability, and reasonable accommodation is provided in didactic, lab, and clinical setting. The government and others have indicated support policies for students with disabilities, and a large-scale survey of healthcare providers with disabilities has been conducted, and the issues have been clarified. This section introduces specific examples of support and reasonable accommodation for students with disabilities overseas. It is thought that the training of students with disabilities and their employment will facilitate diversity among healthcare professionals and improve the quality of healthcare. There is an urgent need to understand the overall picture of healthcare students with disabilities in Japan and to develop support systems for their inclusion.

　Feedback is an educational activity that occurs in a variety of settings in medical education and has been widely discussed since 2008, when Ridder et al. defined it as "Specific information about the comparison between a trainee's observed performance and a standard, given with the intent to improve the trainee's performance." (Ridder et al., 2008, p.3). Since then, discussions on effective feedback have shifted from a behaviorist, instructor-centered approach to a more multifaceted approach that focuses on relationship and the learner as recipient of feedback, or the learner's potential ability to make use of feedback (self-regulated learning, feedback literacy).

Introduction: Early clinical exposure (ECE) is an educational methodology where medical students are exposed to the clinical settings in the undergraduate curriculum. This study aimed to examine the implementation status of ECE at medical schools in Japan. Methods: Based on published syllabi, we investigated the existence, location, and subjects (medical/non-medical staffs) of the training programs in medical schools. Results: Of 78 universities, 74 (95%) offered a total of 173 ECE practical training courses, and 51 (69%) combined on-campus and off-campus ECE training. Regarding the location and subjects, 81% of the on-campus ECE training was for medical personnel, 47% of the off-campus was for non-medical personnel, and 61% of the on- and off-campus was for both medical and non-medical personnel. Conclusions: More medical universities combined ECEs on-campus and off-campus and did not offer exposure only to medical staffs. The national trend can serve as a reference to discuss the circumstance of ECE and to plan ECE courses in the near future.

　Undergraduate medical education requires learning in both science and art. We have developed a learning model for use in first-year medical education that applies art-based research, which has been developed in sociology.　This is a method in which medical students themselves conduct research while creating works of art to solve local medical, health, and welfare problems, deepening their learning. They also share their artworks with other students.　The methodology consists of four steps: [I] groundwork, [II] collection of materials, [III] fieldwork and artwork, and [IV] appreciation of interactive artwork.　In the class, students take the initiative by creating works that are full of individuality and assertiveness. This learning model is a relatively new model for medical education through which students can deepen their understanding of the art of medicine.

　The first author set up a study group with other members in 2014, aiming to improve multidisciplinary collaboration through reflection and discussions on discomfort ( “Moyatto” in Japanese) while focusing on group members’ experiences at work. One-hour online sessions were conducted monthly with multidisciplinary professionals from several institutions. We reflected on interprofessional collaboration based on Moyatto. This paper describes the history of the study group’s inception and development, the learning process of each session, and the theory as a framework. It also reports on the practice and changes in our study group, concluding that interprofessional collaboration requires first-order reflection within a same-profession group and second-order reflection among diverse professionals.

　The goal of medical education is to nurture healthcare professionals who can provide “excellent care.” However, our current medical education has many challenges to overcome to achieve this goal. The reasons are that deep mutual understanding between patients and healthcare professionals, self-awareness, and understanding of humanity, are all necessary for practicing medicine. However they have not been sufficiently verbalized and utilized in education. For medical education to be useful to healthcare professionals, educators, students, and patients, it is necessary to properly articulate these elements and put them into practice as education. This article introduces the “Mindful Practice” approach implemented at the University of Rochester, and explains how it can be used as material for medical education.

　In conjunction with Kegan's Constructive Developmental Theory, Kalet et al. defined the developmental stages of a physician's Professional Identity Formation (PIF). Kalet et al. also developed the Professional Identity Essay (PIE) as a tool to assess the developmental stages of PIF. This paper introduces an educational strategy to enhance the effectiveness of learning with the faculty by using the PIE in community-based clinical clerkship at Jichi Medical University. Students create self-images of the present and future in relation to the professionalism inherent in their mind. The goal is to motivate medical students to reflect sincerely on themselves based on their PIE descriptions and to focus closely on the learning behaviors of the faculty that has something in common with their future images. The reflection, learning behavior, and motivation are the basic elements of self-regulated learning (SRL) proposed by Zimmerman. This educational strategy is a practical application of the PIF-SRL theory proposed by the author.