JOPLIN, Mo. — Art and medicine are in focus this weekend for a local campus.

Missouri Southern is hosting its annual “Artful Medicine Symposium.”

There are speeches on everything from looking at how a background in art can improve patient diagnosis to using artistic observation in the study of disease.

Even the university’s cadaver lab is being utilized to explore how art can improve medical training.

“We’re all different. And that’s the key – students, when they dissect whole-body donors, they appreciate our differences. Anatomical variations that you cannot learn from the anatomical models,” said Alla Barry, MSSU biology professor.

“One example is you can have two people who have the exact same disease. But you don’t treat them the same way. See, it falls back on treating the patient rather than the disease itself. You’re treating a person. And so art helps you realize that because in art what you’re focused on is seeing every little detail,” said Dhvani Patel, biology student.

This is the second year of the symposium. It continues tomorrow.