Reflections on a Research Fellowship

The Center for Visual Arts in Healthcare started a Research Fellowship through generous funding from Amy and Jonathan Poorvu as well as other donors.  This fellowship focuses on the impact of the visual arts for healthcare providers.  Learn more about our inaugural Research Fellow, Stephanie Cohen, a surgical resident at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and an accomplished artist.  Also hear from Amy Poorvu about her support for this important work.

How did you become interested in the intersection of arts and healthcare? 

Stephanie: Ever since I could hold a pencil, I have always loved to draw and to create. I was constantly drawing throughout my youth, and the only time I ever got in trouble was when I “skipped recess” in elementary school to hide in the art classroom and draw. My mom was diagnosed with secondary progressive multiple sclerosis when I was 7 years old and I used to draw for her because, it was something that I loved to do, and it made her happy. I was drawn to both science and art because I was always questioning “how things work”. There is a similar curiosity involved in breaking down visual constructs to understand how shapes and shadows come together to make a landscape, as there is in trying to understand disease processes.  

When I was a senior in high school, I started learning about the biology of cancer for the first time in my science class. We discussed how cells bypass cell-cycle checkpoints, become unresponsive signals their local environments, and proliferate out of control---accumulating more and more errors within their genetic code. When we learned about this, I thought about parallels in music. In an orchestra, when one instrument is out of tune, it creates musical dissonance. The “microscopic” instrument manifests “macroscopically” in the disruption of the entire orchestra. To convey this idea visually, I created 12 drawings that depict human anatomy within the inorganic shells of musical instruments. I wanted to express the idea that cells and organs must function in harmony---and what happens when equilibrium is disrupted. In creating these 12 pieces, I learned an immense amount about structural anatomy, and realized, although my goal was always to be a doctor, that I could never give up art.

Why decide to fund this fellowship?

Amy: It was Dr. Joel Katz and Brooke DiGiovanni who first introduced me to their new initiative for visual arts education at the BWH. Having worked as a Gallery Instructor leading students tours through the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, I have witnessed first-hand how transformative group learning can be. Since its inception, Brooke and Joel have shown exceptional leadership getting these programs for healthcare professionals off the ground.  Brooke’s extensive experience as an arts educator and deep knowledge of area museums and their objects paired with Joel’s career in medicine and his extraordinary dedication to his students, patients, and co-workers, provides me with confidence that the mission of this initiative will be fulfilled.

What projects are you working on in your research fellowship?

Stephanie: We currently have many ongoing projects that show how broadly the arts can be applied to medicine. We developed a Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) curriculum for surgical residents aimed at improving intentional observational skills, critical thinking, and teamwork through the use of visual art. In addition to curriculum design, we are currently working on studies to measure the impact of this type of course work for a variety of learners including students, residents ,and attending physicians in a newly designed visual arts survey tool. Another project I am extremely passionate about is measuring how visual aids/medical illustrations may be useful for patients of lower healthcare literacy or for patients that do not speak English.  

What do you personally see as the benefits the arts can add to healthcare? 

Stephanie: I think at its core, and throughout history, the purpose of art has always been to communicate. Medical illustration as well as pedagogies such as Visual Thinking Strategies enhance communication between individuals, and between and within teams. There are of course many other benefits too, such as teaching clinicians to become more detail oriented and to take the perspectives of others. Just as two people may interpret a painting differently, clinicians can look at the same set of objective patient data and come up with different differential diagnoses or focus on different, but concurrent problems. That is the “process” benefit. There is also an immense “content” benefit. Visual aids can potential to break down language barriers and communicate complex information in a more accessible way for patients and their families.

What do you hope to accomplish by the end of your fellowship? 

Stephanie: I hope to develop new curricula as well as publish a large breadth of work showing how pedagogies that involve the visual arts observation and analysis impact clinicians and students, to illustrate a textbook for medical student surgical clerkships, and to create validated visual aids with provider and patient input---and measure how they impact patient outcomes. I am taking a variety of illustration classes to further improve my own technical skills. I will continue to work as a free-lance artist and sell artwork to hospitals, in local coffee shops, and online through my website. Personally, I also want to finish running all of the World’s Major marathons by the Spring of 2025. 

What do you hope will be the result of the research?

Amy: My hope would be that through research and scholarship we will be able to provide empirical evidence that the visual art-based programs we are providing are having a positive impact on health care professionals and their work with patients in a hospital setting.

Advice to future researchers in arts in healthcare?  

Stephanie: There are many different avenues one can explore, and it is often hard to pick just one since there are so many different types of art interventions and a wide range of audiences. Keeping an open mind and experiencing as much as possible is important before deciding exactly what your “niche within this niche” will be. I would also recommend connecting with people from a variety of institutions to understand what they are doing to have a more broad perspective, to learn, and to be inspired. The more we collaborate, the more we can achieve. 

Check back on the CVAH website to learn the results of the research projects and work that Stephanie accomplished during her Fellowship.

Amy Poorvu, CVAH Advisory Committee Member and Donor

Stephanie Cohen, Artist and BIDMC Surgical Resident