Thabane Alex, Saleh Sarah, Pallapothu Sushmitha, McKechnie Tyler, Staibano Phillip, Busse Jason W, Calic Goran, Sonnadara Ranil, Parpia Sameer, Bhandari Mohit
Department of Health Research, Evidence, and Impact, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada.
Department of Surgery, McMaster University Medical Center, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
PLoS One. 2025 Jan 8;20(1):e0317209. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0317209. eCollection 2025.
Creativity fuels societal progress and innovation, particularly in the field of medicine. The scientific study of creativity in medicine is critical to understanding how creativity contributes to medical practice, processes, and outcomes. An appraisal of the current scientific literature on the topic, and its gaps, will expand our understanding of how creativity and medicine interact, and guide future research.
We aimed to assess the quantity, trends, distribution, and methodological features of the peer-reviewed on creativity in medicine.
We searched the MEDLINE, EMBASE, and PsycINFO databases for peer-reviewed primary research publications on creativity in medicine. Screening, full-text review, and data extraction were performed independently and in duplicate by pairs of reviewers, with discrepancies resolved by a third reviewer. We performed descriptive analyses, graphically displaying the data using charts and maps where appropriate.
Eighty-one studies were eligible for review, enrolling a total of 18,221 physicians, nurses and midwifes across all studies. Most research on creativity in medicine was published in the last decade, predominately in the field of nursing (75%). Researchers from Taiwan (22%) and the United States (21%) produced the most eligible publications, and the majority research was cross-sectional in nature (54%). There was substantial variability in the definitions of creativity adopted, and most studies failed to specify a definition of creativity. Forty-five different measurement tools were used to assess creativity, the most popular being divergent thinking tests such as the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (24%) and Guilford Creativity Tests (16%).
Peer-reviewed scientific research on creativity in medicine, mostly conducted in the nursing profession, is sparse and performed on variable methodological grounds. Further scientific research on the topic, as well as the development of medicine-specific definitions and measurement tools, is required to uncover the utility of creativity in the medical domain.
创造力推动社会进步与创新，在医学领域尤为如此。对医学创造力进行科学研究对于理解创造力如何促进医疗实践、流程及结果至关重要。评估当前关于该主题的科学文献及其差距，将拓展我们对创造力与医学相互作用的理解，并为未来研究提供指导。
我们旨在评估医学领域经同行评审的关于创造力的研究数量、趋势、分布及方法学特征。
我们在MEDLINE、EMBASE和PsycINFO数据库中检索经同行评审的关于医学创造力的原创性研究出版物。筛选、全文审查和数据提取由成对的评审员独立且重复进行，如有分歧则由第三位评审员解决。我们进行了描述性分析，并在适当情况下使用图表和地图以图形方式展示数据。
81项研究符合综述标准，所有研究共纳入18221名医生、护士和助产士。关于医学创造力的大多数研究发表于过去十年，主要集中在护理领域（75%）。来自台湾（22%）和美国（21%）的研究人员发表的符合条件的出版物最多，且大多数研究本质上是横断面研究（54%）。所采用的创造力定义存在很大差异，且大多数研究未明确创造力的定义。使用了45种不同的测量工具来评估创造力，最常用的是发散性思维测试，如托兰斯创造性思维测试（24%）和吉尔福德创造力测试（16%）。
关于医学创造力的经同行评审的科学研究较为稀少，主要在护理专业进行，且基于可变的方法学基础。需要对该主题进行进一步的科学研究，以及制定针对医学的定义和测量工具，以揭示创造力在医学领域的效用。
