Using paintings to explore the medical humanities in a Nepalese medical school

Mutual humanization: a visual exploration of relationships in medical care

In this article, I explore the work of the artist Robert Pope (b.1957- d.1992) who published a series of paintings and drawings which documented his decade-long experience with Hodgkin's lymphoma. More widely, Pope was interested in 'the culture' of cancer within hospitals and the relationships embedded in experiences of illness and care. Pope published a book that contains much of this work--Illness and Healing: Images of Cancer (1991). Many of the original artworks have been toured throughout Canada and the United Kingdom at cancer centres and medical schools. Using a visual methodology, I present three of Pope's images to examine and understand the experiences of patients within acute care settings. I conclude that Pope's work can be efficacious in exploring relationships in acute care settings.

Student feedback on the use of paintings in Sparshanam, the Medical Humanities module at KIST Medical College, Nepal

BACKGROUND

Paintings have been used in Medical Humanities modules in Nepal at Manipal College of Medical Sciences and KIST Medical College. Detailed participant feedback about the paintings used, the activities carried out, problems with using paintings and the role of paintings in future modules has not been previously done. Hence the present study was carried out.

METHODS

The present module for first year medical students was conducted from February to August 2010 at KIST Medical College, Nepal. Paintings used were by Western artists and obtained from the Literature, Arts and Medicine database. The activities undertaken by the students include answering the questions 'What do you see' and 'What do you feel' about the painting, creating a story of 100 words about the scene depicted, and interpreting the painting using role plays and poems/songs. Feedback was not obtained about the last two activities. In August 2010 we obtained detailed feedback about the paintings used.

RESULTS

Seventy-eight of the 100 students (78%) participated. Thirty-four students (43.6%) were male. The most common overall comments about the use of paintings were "they helped me feel what I saw" (12 respondents), "enjoyed the sessions" (12 respondents), "some paintings were hard to interpret" (10 respondents) and "were in tune with module objectives" (10 respondents). Forty-eight (61.5%) felt the use of western paintings was appropriate. Suggestions to make annotations about paintings more useful were to make them shorter and more precise, simplify the language and properly introduce the artist. Forty-one students (52.6%) had difficulty with the exercise 'what do you feel'. Seventy-four students (94.9%) wanted paintings from Nepal to be included.

CONCLUSIONS

Participant response was positive and they were satisfied with use of paintings in the module. Use of more paintings from Nepal and South Asia can be considered. Further studies may be required to understand whether use of paintings succeeded in fulfilling module objectives.

'Compulsory creativity': rationales, recipes, and results in the placement of mandatory creative endeavour in a medical undergraduate curriculum

Since 2004, medical students at the University of Bristol have been required as part of their core curriculum to submit creative works for assessment. This requirement, which we term, ironically, compulsory creativity, may be unique within medical education where arts-based modules are typically elective. Such courses often harness the insights of established artists and writers in the illumination of medical themes. Less commonly students are called upon to link their own creative work with clinical and other life experience. Occasions for students to develop such an interpretative voice are generally sparse but the benefits can be argued theoretically and practically. In this paper we explore the rationale for the inclusion of such opportunities, the ways in which we have woven creativity into the curriculum and the sorts of artistic outputs we have witnessed. Contextualised links to a wide range of original student works from the www.outofourheads.net website are provided, as is a range of student reflection on the creative process ranging from the bemused to the ecstatic. The paper provides a model and a guide for educationalists interested in developing artistic creativity within the medical curriculum.