Arts in medicine: Nurturing creativity through community collaboration

Abstract

With limited time and resources within the core curriculum for arts and humanities topics, seeking assistance from outside our institution provided a pathway to develop an arts in medicine experience targeting fourth-year students about to enter residency.

An Arts in Medicine elective was developed in collaboration with a local community arts organisation to expose medical students to therapeutic arts and health initiatives in community settings. The main objectives were to demonstrate how the arts complement traditional practices, illustrate the role of arts in medicine, share how to access these resources and highlight how physicians integrate arts in medicine into their clinical practice and own wellbeing.

The 3-day, 4-week elective, offered in both Spring and Fall of 2023, focused on music, drama, visual art and creative writing arts in medicine initiatives. Each day, students attended a morning didactic on arts in medicine approaches and techniques related to each arts modality. The afternoons offered an applied clinical exposure out in the community where students could observe or personally apply the learned techniques with different clinical populations, for example, music for Alzheimer's patients, drama for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities or creative writing to promote cognitive fitness within healthy ageing seniors. Students created a final art deliverable using a modality of their choosing to highlight their experiences throughout the course.

The elective provided an opportunity to interact with medically vulnerable populations as whole people. Students appreciated having time with community members that represented groups they previously received limited exposure to, particularly persons with Down Syndrome and other exceptionalities. Students reported increased feelings of connection and empathy for patients in formal post-course evaluation and in informal feedback. The elective was successful in exposing students to the use of therapeutic creative arts practices and credentialed creative arts professions. Students gained familiarity with arts resources in hospitals or community systems they may encounter during residency. The students acquired valuable skills in how to use the tools/skills taught to benefit their personal wellness, a major issue for medical learners.

Key to this programme was collaborating with a community arts organisation to build the elective and plan the weekly experiential learning opportunities. However, because the course was highly experiential and took place within a community context, participation was limited to those who were willing to stay local, which impacted overall enrollment. This execution required grant dollars to launch, and so establishing a plan for long-term sustainability past the initial ‘pilot’ is necessary. Future costs associated with providing instruction for the elective might be addressed by seeking out additional collaborations within the university.

In summary, the elective provided valuable experiences to our fourth-year students. The arts teams, strategies and tools they were exposed to have increased the likelihood that they will seek out these resources to benefit their patients in the future.

Natasha Williams: Writing – original draft; writing – review and editing; conceptualization; funding acquisition; project administration; supervision. Kaileigh Anne Tayek: Funding acquisition; writing – original draft; writing – review and editing; project administration; supervision. Katherine Daly: Funding acquisition; writing – original draft; writing – review and editing; supervision.

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