Arts Programs Provide Welcome Antidote to Discomfort

The University of New Mexico Hospital incorporates the arts in patient care settings and waiting rooms to relieve stress. Hospital staff report that art programs build communication between caregivers and patients.

By Suria Santana

The nurses working the late shift at the University of New Mexico’s hospital were baffled. An elderly Navajo woman, lying in one of the inpatient beds, had been crying unintelligibly for a couple of hours. It was clear that she was not suffering from pain, but it was difficult to determine the source of her discomfort.

Patricia Repar, director of the University of New Mexico arts-in-medicine program and a visiting professor at the university’s music department, was doing her rounds that evening as volunteer for a program that brings music and singing to the bedside. After sitting down and trying to make sense of what the patient was saying, Repar noticed that her words were a mix of English, Navajo and Christian liturgy. She then began to repeat the woman’s words and gestures and played a CD featuring Navajo chants.

“The woman got to be quite curious about what I was doing there and every once in a while stopped screaming and asked me a question in completely coherent English,” Repar said. Slowly, the voice of the patient dropped and she started singing along with the musician.

“We chanted for about two hours until I finally sank into a chair from exhaustion,” Repar recalled. The woman soon quieted down and rested for the remainder of the evening.

All that was required to calm the patient down was the right blend of music and empathy.

Like others who utilize art within healthcare settings, Repar is conscious that her efforts cannot heal pain, but they can at least provide a welcome respite.

“I did not permanently fix or cure the [Navajo woman’s] situation,” Repar said. “I relieved the suffering of the patient and the nurses for a few hours. Sometimes that goes a long way in the midst of a desperate situation.”

During the past three decades, the arts have become more visible in healthcare settings. Since 1978, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has supported a broad range of professional arts

programs, many of which are offered at teaching hospitals. The NEA issued a report last year calling for greater involvement of the arts in healthcare and offered programmatic suggestions that have been adopted by many academic health centers.

The agency’s suggestions call for the development of artistic activities to help patients relax, socialize, find solace, or simply express their emotions. New Mexico’s arts-in-medicine program, an interdisciplinary venture that combines members of the medical and fine arts schools, follows many of the NEA’s recommendations.

“People tend to call what we are doing ‘therapy,’ but it is really not,” Repar said. “It can be therapeutic, but it is not therapy. The latter is about diagnosis, prescription and anticipated out- comes whereas what we are doing is really just generating creative momentum.”

Thanks to the institution’s arts-in-medicine program, twice a week patients at the hospital are greeted by the strains of harp music, featuring melodies that range from classical to the Beatles. Susan Harrison-Salt, director of New Mexico’s Hospital Emergency Services, noted that the music has a calming effect on patients who face a long waiting period.

“They are less angry, and there are fewer complaints about waiting,” she said.

Patients sometimes request specific songs and sing along with the harpist, bobbing their heads to the melody, according to Repar. They are given watercolors and other craft materials to amuse themselves during their emergency room wait.

Georgetown University’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center is another institution that features musicians and performers in patient settings. Funded through donations and a foundation grant that adds up to approximately $75,000 a year, the Georgetown program uses the arts to increase communication between patients and caregivers.

“Sometimes people become very passive after a diagnosis, when it is a very important time to speak up and tell people how you feel,” said Nancy Morgan, director of the arts program at Lombardi. “The arts help people get their voice back and give them a sense of normalcy through a very traumatic phase.”

Arts are introduced into the Lombardi Center in different ways, from wall displays of art completed by patients and doctors to poetry readings and creative writing sessions.

These artistic activities provide a creative way to establish a physician-patient bond. A patient at Lombardi walked down the hallway one day and realized that some of the art on the wall was the work of her own physician, Morgan said. The patient was a photography enthusiast, and after finding out that her doctor shared her interest she decided to talk to him about it.

“The next time he came in and started talking about her diagnosis, they ended up chatting about photography for a while, and that actually strengthened their relationship,” Morgan said.

Another patient with artistic inclinations gave a poetry reading at the center last year. During a moment of inspiration, the patient just burst into song, much to the pleasure of those present. She had such a beautiful voice, Morgan said, that everyone encouraged her to sing at other events.

Helping Physicians Relax

Doctors and other hospital employees also welcome the diversion art programs offer during otherwise exhausting workdays. New Mexico’s arts-in-medicine program includes “creative encounters” and relaxation sessions for healthcare professionals. A group of volunteers, dubbed “roving rejuvenators,” gives hospital employees massages, breathing instruction and yoga lessons.

At Lombardi, Morgan recently gave doctors a presentation on art therapy and its effect on oncology patients.

“Ten minutes within the presentation we told the doctors that we wanted them to have an experiential lesson, so we brought a cart of clay and had all of them participate in creating objects,” she said. “They frankly loved this exercise.”

Although some might see such exercises as futile, Ann Flipse, M.D., a professor at the University of Miami School of Medicine, said that physicians with exposure to the fine arts are likely to become more compassionate professionals.

Dr. Flipse developed a comprehensive program on arts and humanities at her institution. Undergraduate medical students taking the program’s classes are given summer reading lists, writing and drawing assignments and are asked to engage in related group work and discussions.

“A few students don’t understand why they have to take some of the courses,” Dr. Flipse said. Others are extremely excited and supportive of the program’s classes and workshops.

“The arts and humanities are essential for people to understand others, and they make the physician more complete in his life and better equipped to deal with patients,” Dr. Flipse continued. “They are even more important now that many doctors seem to have lost the bedside touch and patients claim to have a hard time relating to them.”

Stuart Mennin, Ph.D., emeritus professor of cell biology and physiology and assistant dean for educational development and research at the University of New Mexico, is a strong advocate for bringing the arts into healthcare. A faculty member who was instrumental in the development of the medical school’s arts program, Dr. Mennin says that the incorporation of arts into medical teaching and healthcare settings can create better physicians and help address some of our system’s failings.

“Our healthcare system and health education are becoming increasingly fragmented,” Dr. Mennin said. “The fragmentation in teaching and practicing medicine means that physicians know fabulous details about very specific things and that their knowledge about them increases every day.”

The arts play a unique role in bridging the gap between increasedmedical specialization and the human element of providing care.

“The arts have always spoken most directly to the universality of the human condition,” Dr. Mennin said. “Introducing the arts back into medicine can bring a sense of becoming whole again to people who have become fragmentized by the healthcare system.”

Despite the apparent abyss between medicine and the arts, the two fields have many similarities, according to Repar. By becoming familiar with the arts and the creative process, she believes physicians might be better able to deal with some of the more difficult situations in their practice. The creative process behind art mirrors the challenges physicians have when diagnosing patients with illness. Both processes are very ambiguous and frequently rely on trial and error.

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