The art of medical conversation: art as the medium for patient communication. From the article: 

This art session [at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center] was a demonstration of BEAM—short for Bedside Education in the Art of Medicine—a project created by Margaret Chisolm and Susan Lehmann in the School of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences as a way to foster empathy with patients. BEAM, currently in pilot phase, is a mobile app inspired by Quaker teacher Parker J. Palmer’s pedagogical approach of a “third thing,” where images or an object can serve as icebreaker between two parties to create a safe space for difficult topics of conversation. In this case, the third things are public domain paintings, photographs, and poems that can be searched by artist, title, and theme such as pain, loneliness, joy, fear, dying, and hopelessness.

“These works can serve to grease the skids, and get a meaningful conversation going,” Chisolm says. “Our hope is that it not just brings the medical team closer together but the team closer with the patient as well.”

In the first BEAM demo earlier this year, [Christiana] Zhang used Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks painting to discuss the case of a blind patient who had been widowed for nearly two decades. The caregiving team had gotten together several times to confer about the patient’s disease progression and treatment, but for those few minutes they contemplated lonely figures in a late night diner. Zhang, who admits she was initially skeptical about the prospect of using a painting or poem to discuss a patient’s care, says the Nighthawks discussion gave her chills as the group considered what it meant to be truly alone.

“We got talking more about the social side of this man’s life and how we could help him outside the hospital, rather than just treat his medical problems,” she says. “This changed our interaction with him from that point on. We spent more time with him and learned details about his social life, and we were very conscious of this as we developed a safe discharge plan for him.”

Multiple recent studies have shown that there is decreased empathy and increased burnout among medical students and residents nationwide, as medicine has become increasingly focused on technological advances. And young learners are often asked to work long shifts and shuttle between numerous patients, making it a challenge to develop in-depth relationships. Several other studies have shown that art can be an effective tool to both foster empathy and improve observation skills, which have been linked with improved patient outcomes.

For other posts on art humanities and health, see here and here.