Takeaway
Art has the capacity to heal. Both healthcare professionals and patients can benefit from art’s potential to reduce stress and restore hope.
Passion in the Medical Profession | October 4, 2023 | 1 min read
By Jonathan McFarland, Medical English Coach, Autonomous University of Madrid
Richard Kamler, the American artist and activist said,“Art is our one true global language. It knows no nation, it favors no race, it acknowledges no class. It speaks to our need to reveal, heal, and transform. It transcends our ordinary lives and lets us imagine what is possible.”
In these challenging times of growing inequality and poverty, health systems around the world are doing their best to cope with the lingering effects of the pandemic, despite difficulties like lack of morale and an increase in burnout among healthcare professionals. Art can restore and bring back some degree of hope. This is because art, as Kamler mentions, aims to reveal, heal, and transform.
For this reason, The Doctor as a Humanist along with the University of Pompeu Fabra and Hospital del Mar ( Barcelona) are organizing an international event where to explore the healing interactions between health and art.
Doctors, nurses, medical students, artists, art therapists, neuroscientists, and philosophers from many countries, like the U.S. and Iran, Egypt and Portugal, Mexico and Spain, the UK and Romania will discuss a wide range of topics such as art therapy and eating disorders, the importance of touch, and architecture and design in hospitals.
I work toward my goal of helping medical professionals to heal healthcare systems, to heal themselves, and to heal the patient, the caregiver, and fractured communities.
Art has healing powers because humans are feeling beings who think and NOT the other way around.
“Art is our one true global language. It knows no nation, it favors no race, it acknowledges no class. It speaks to our need to reveal, heal, and transform. It transcends our ordinary lives and lets us imagine what is possible.”—Richard Kamler
This piece expresses the views solely of the author. It does not necessarily represent the views of any organization, including Johns Hopkins Medicine.