Healing in Nature: A Retreat-Based Course for Fourth Year Medical Students

Despite well-documented and ubiquitous belief that connection to nature is essential to human well-being, both medical practitioners and patients experience suffering related to the impacts of lack of connection. Nonetheless, we believe the benefits of connection and a sense of kinship with wild nature are integral to the professional development and self-care of physicians, and we hope to encourage our students to consider this belief as well. At the juncture of these areas, a fourth-year medical student elective was developed for students to explore the fundamental ecopsychological and ecospiritual concerns for reconnection with nature and the broader implications for mental health in the context of alienation from the natural world. To consider how a nature intervention could both prepare medical students to manage their future work as physicians and prompt them to consider how their patients could benefit from like interventions, the purpose of this project was to evaluate the efficacy of the course and to examine the impact on students’ perceptions of nature and well-being of themselves and their patients. Participants enrolled in an M4 elective, including two nature immersions, completed pre- and post-course surveys, course writing assignments, and pre- and post-course creative surveys. The student responses demonstrated that students had positive reactions, increased learning, and altered behavioral intentions as a result of the course. This course could be easily replicated at other institutions or utilized to design development opportunities for students, faculty, or staff.