A week-long pre-enrollment program for improving cognitive functioning, creativity, and synthesizing ability in community college health science students was developed. This work was planned to prepare nursing and other health science students to equip themselves as well as possible for their future diagnostic responsibilities, in hopes they will be more successful both as students and as professionals.

Diagnosis includes a grasp of a large quantity of data which arises from disease, trauma, or degeneration. It is an interplay of what are considered right- and left-mode brain functions. Left-mode functions include linear analysis and verbal ability, and right-mode functions include visual and holistic thinking; both are necessary. Health professionals who write down all possible data but understand no relationships function poorly, as do those who diagnose intuitively, but cannot analyze their patients' conditions to verify their intuitions.

This program was presented to incoming health science students who have not yet studied human physiology nor begun clinical courses. Sessions were held at the Science Education Center at the University of Texas at Austin for five full days. Twenty participants completed the program. The three-part course consisted of segments that addressed the left mode, the right mode, and integration of the two: the computer language LOGO. Performance was measured with the Arlin Test of Formal Reasoning (ATFR) and the Torrance Tests of Creativity Figural Forms A and B as pretests and posttests.

Posttest scores on both the ATFR and the Torrance Creativity Index (overall score) increased significantly for the treatment group, but not the controls. Findings were significant at the.02 level or better. Also, most treatment subjects demonstrated unusual ability to synthesize on the Torrance posttest. Torrance examiners report that this multiple-figure finding occurs in 5% of the population; it was found in 80% of the treatment group.

Thus participants demonstrated significant increases in cognitive functioning, creativity and synthesizing ability. Further research will seek to replicate the study, determine whether there is a synergy between elements of the program, and determine which elements are essential. Pre-service and inservice science teachers and science students might benefit from such a program as well.