The "arts in healthcare" is a wide-ranging international movement that covers the waterfront of possibilities for how the arts enhance lives and impact patient care, hospital environments, care for caregivers, and community-building within medical and other settings. Also known by some as "arts in medicine," the use of the arts in healthcare has been around for many decades with a recent surge in growth during the last ten years despite a bumpy economy and the rocky ride to healthcare reform. Over the last two decades, research on how the arts-- visual, music, movement, drama, literature, creative writing, and humor-- enhance health has increased exponentially [see previous post, Humor: The Human Gift for Coping and Survival]. Data point to a number of promising trends demonstrating that patients' participation in the arts reduce use of pain medication, increase compliance with treatments, and shorten the length of stay in hospitals, among other thought-provoking findings. The arts are also being used to create safer hospital environments, introduce nature into medical settings, and enhance aesthetics through hanging art on previously sterile wall space. And guess what? Patient/caregiver stress is measurably reduced, quality of care is increased, and costs of treatment go down.
In many medical schools, first year med students now routinely take short courses in arts and humanities and experience visual art, music-making, movement, or creative writing as therapies. Long time arts-medicine icon and advocate for the arts in healthcare, John Graham-Pole, MD, is one of many physicians who believe that both the arts and sciences working together make the world-and hospitals-a better place. Graham-Pole, a pediatrician, co-founded the Arts in Medicine Program at Shands Hospital where the creative arts, play, and humor have become as important as chemotherapy, surgery, and medications. While recently retired from Shands, he is still an example of how art and medicine complement each other to benefit patients; John is a poet and humorist who consistently uses a mixture of laughter and literature to facilitate patient wellness as part of his work.
In 1991, physicians like Graham-Pole, artists, arts therapists, hospital administrators, arts advocates, and like-minded individuals founded the
Society for the Arts in Healthcare [SAH], an international organization of professionals and students dedicated to the advancement of how the arts improve people's lives and particularly patients challenged by medical illness. Later this month, SAH will welcome over 600 colleagues from around the world to its annual conference, "
pARTners in HEALTH," in Minneapolis, MN, from April 28th to May 1st, 2010, to explore how the arts makes a difference in patient care, hospital environments, caring for caregivers [family, friends, and healthcare providers], and communities. I can tell you from experience that it is a dynamic gathering not only of artists, creative arts therapists, doctors, and healthcare professionals, but also curators, designers, administrators,
spiritual leaders, educators, researchers, and policy makers. SAH also recently launched a journal,
Arts & Health, to provide a scholarly, peer-reviewed forum for research, public policy, and professional practice. In future posts, I'll be summarizing some of the emerging trends in arts in healthcare research.
Like the expressive arts therapies, the arts in healthcare movement recognizes the arts,
creativity, and imagination as agents of wellness and their consistent and central presence throughout history as healing practices. Hopefully, this century will recapture the importance of humanizing medicine through embracing the arts as part of patient care and improving the quality of hospital environments by incorporating music, dance, visual art, humor, and aesthetics into all healthcare services. This is the essence, as well as the heart and soul, of the arts in healthcare.
© 2010 Cathy Malchiodi, PhD, LPAT, LPCC
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Recycled sculptures by Bradford, not only strike a cool factor by including toys we remember growing up with - but who'd of thought of taking "trash" and turning it into 100's of dollars worth of sculptures!
