When thinking about using the arts to heal I came across this project by Dr. Jennifer Lapum. I had seen her speak and perform a few years ago when she was in the thick of conducting her research. What follows is another example of the notion of patient-centred care. Like the dementia village about which I wrote last time, this project reflects the notion of art and healing in a very literal sense.
The 7024th Patient is an art installation that communicates research findings by recreating the lived experiences of cardiac patients. The poetry, created from the words of patients recovering from heart surgery, is exhibited alongside photographs displayed in a physical space. In using the arts as a means to disseminate their research findings, this team of researchers fosters an empathetic and embodied response - a humanistic, patient-centred approach to sharing their research findings rather a clinical approach. The installation is on exhibition at Sunnybrook Health Sciences in Toronto from March 11th.
Dr. Jennifer Lapum the principal investigator is an associate professor at Ryerson as well as a registered nurse in cardiovascular intensive care. She is a poet and a researcher who chooses an arts-based narrative approach to her work. She is focused on enhancing patients’ overall health while at the same time endeavouring to make sure that no patient feels like a number or “the 7,024th patient”. She brings the arts to the health sciences in order to facilitate the medical practitioners’ capacity to become subjective and to see the patient as a person and not just as a number.
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