As first-year medical students sitting in the back of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine lecture hall, we had no idea what to expect from the Art and Science of Medicine course. We all thought of ourselves as scientists (I mean, this was medical school!). Art was far from most of our minds. Questions like “What will this class be like?,” “Will it be lecture-based or textbook-based?,” and “Will the exams be graded or simply marked Pass or Fail?” flooded our minds. In typical Jaime and Sheeva fashion, poised with pens in our hands (we were both ferocious note takers!), we were ready to transcribe every word uttered by the lecturer to soak up and eventually memorize every piece of data shared. However, what followed surprised us: we would not be note taking, we would not be studying, and we would not be test taking.

We would learn about the art of medicine.

Art and medicine may strike some of you as odd. It did us! Medicine is a practice rooted in science and data, not color or design. The people you knew who became doctors did it because they liked facts, not pictures. However, in reality, how we diagnose a disease, how we treat a problem, and how we formulate a plan are really an art. The many available imaging modalities, medications, and surgical procedures are our colors. How we blend them to get the best outcome for you, the patient, is our art.

For fertility doctors, ovarian stimulation in particular (a.k.a. how you get the ovaries to produce multiple eggs) is our art. What protocol we select for a patient, when we increase and decrease medications, and how to obtain the highest percentage of mature, good-quality eggs is our art (not to be confused with ART= assisted reproductive technology!). Sure, we have scientific data to guide us in our decisions, but what can make one IVF cycle more successful than the other has a lot to do with the art of ovarian stimulation. And we bring you back day after day for blood draw after blood draw and ultrasound after ultrasound not because we like to torture you but because it helps us customize your design, your art.

Don’t get us wrong. There is a lot of science in what we do. The laboratory is our science. The embryologists, the culture system, and the genetic testing are science. And without the science, our art is just some strokes on a blank canvas. It takes both, the art and the science, to treat a patient and to achieve success in all areas of medicine.

So, if you ever wonder why we do what do and how we decide on treatment protocols, they are our art. And when they are combined with science, it can make a beautiful picture!