An artwork a day keeps the doctors engaged
How visual art and narrative medicine are improving patient care and the mental health of their providers
A medical practitioner examining a patient is a lot like a museum educator interpreting a work of art: both professions require close observation, strong communication, critical thinking, and empathy. Whereas these skills help doctors save lives, for museum educators they enable a deeper connection and understanding of exhibitions, objects, and context. As a result of this alignment, museums and medical sites have increasingly begun to collaborate to help train emerging and current medical professionals, fine tuning the skills needed for an effective bedside manner.
Over the last decade, the PMA has designed workshops for the University of Southern Maine Nursing program, Tufts Medical School residents, and most recently, the Maine Medical Center staff and Maine Health partners. From January to April 2022, PMA’s Christian Adame, Peggy L. Osher Director of Learning and Community Collaboration, and Meghan Quigley Graham, Learning and Teaching Specialist, along with co-facilitator and medical professional Courtni Jeffers, led a 16-week long interdisciplinary course delving into the power of the visual arts and literature in the healthcare sector.
The program, Art & Literature & Medicine, is based on open-ended and object-based teaching, using the PMA’s collection as a tool for learning. Questioning, judgement, implicit bias, and interpretation all come into play when looking at art and can be used in clinical settings to affect patient interaction and care. “It doesn’t matter what you know about a person,” shares Courtni Jeffers, Research Associate of Public Health at University of New England and instructor of Narrative Medicine at Columbia University, “if you don’t hear their story from them, you can’t center their care.” Jeffers believes that patients’ stories are so central to their wellbeing that every little detail can be something that enables personal agency and improves equity.
The practice of building empathy and understanding is a key goal in the Art & Medicine & Literature program. Viewers of works of art can reflect and consider what the artist is communicating, much like a medical practitioner can empower and validate what a patient is expressing and experiencing. This process, called narrative medicine, is a methodology to enable people to be able to listen and receive accounts, but critically, to understand what to do with that story. “The idea of equipping people to recognize where their preordained listening is and where their internal bias may be,” continues Jeffers, “[provides] the skills to recognize their contextual lenses... It’s an incredible process.”
“I do have a firm belief that art enriches our life and whatever other endeavors we’re involved in professionally or personally. I think art is a beautiful and necessary part of the human experience.”
Class participant Dina McKelvey, Director of Library & Knowledge Services at Maine Medical Center, agrees. “We encounter people all day long, and not just people, but images,” she shares. “So many of our specialties are image-driven, whether it’s radiology or dermatology, anyone doing a physical exam is using their eyes and I think there’s implicit bias in everything we are viewing.” By exercising empathy through the arts as part of her training, McKelvey believes, it in turn helps physicians become better listeners and stewards of their patient’s care.
Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), the foundation of many museum interpretive and learning approaches, focuses viewer-centered facilitating to create engaging and inclusive discussions about art to gain a deeper understanding. Through VTS and programs like Art & Medicine & Literature, the PMA ensures that skills of observation, interpretation, empathy, and critical thinking are prioritized across a wide array of professions, disciplines, and fields—not just medicine. And this commitment creates space for personal reflection, team building, and establishing a meaningful culture.
“I really enjoy the ‘A-Ha’ moment of seeing someone else’s interpretation,” shares Mark Swiedom, Provider Audit and Education Specialist at Maine Health, about his time in Art & Medicine & Literature. “It’s a small epiphany where you think, ‘I don’t know if I’d have ever thought of that on my own.’”
Slowing down and being present with art, especially with the stress put onto physicians due to the pandemic, is a positive takeaway for class participants. “I would have a hard day, very stressful, with hard conversations,” reflects Sara Jodi, Manager of Interpretive Services and Cross-Cultural Services at Maine Health. “I have to talk to my interpreters if they experience the death of a patient. Especially as an interpreter, they build this relationship with the patient. The interpreter comes with them along that journey. That’ll create a lot of emotional energy to support my staff. And so sometimes when it’s a hard day and then I have the class at six, we are still talking about work things, but I have that relief, that break from that hard day. A disconnect, but still connecting.”
She summed up her experience, “You gotta nourish yourself and then you can help patients and support them. You cannot pour from an empty cup.”
“Narrative medicine has a huge role in reducing power imbalances in the physician encounter. And when they tell you their story, that never happens the same ever again, that moment never happens the same again. And so every single time, no matter what the material is, I recognize something about myself because it’s somebody else’s perspective. I practice that attunement and that representation, and that affiliation and I leave feeling like I’ve expanded in a way that is beneficial to the world.”