A medical career is rewarding, but choosing this route is sometimes stressful and exhausting. Those in this field experience many emotions, from feeling the need to save their patients, sensing failure and frustration when their patients turn for the worse, facing uncertainty in clinical practices, and even the worry of oneself becoming ill or dying. Balancing fears with their lives outside of the hospital or clinic by supporting a family, controlling finances, and even planning for retirement puts immense weight on those who want to improve the world. Unfortunately, the inability to control these negative emotions and form more cohesive social relationships increases mortality and disease.1 Time after time, healthcare professionals are put on the front lines to face sickness and death, but that’s what we signed up for, right? And as if a career in medicine was not challenging enough, COVID-19 completely turned the world as we know it upside down. Initial stages of lockdown, isolation, and the fear of death consumed our psyches and pushed our mental and physical health to the brink. Our mental state took an equally detrimental toll as we worked tirelessly to treat these suffering patients. We were not used to this “new normal,” and we do not think we ever will be. Many factors contributed to our swiftly deteriorating mental health, including isolation, loss of jobs, and difficulty in providing support for our families.
Many of us made the decree “Primum Non Nocere” (first, do no harm) when we made the pact to pursue a medical career. Although the rewards are meaningful, there are many instances where we have found ourselves in harm’s way. In stressful situations, our body releases the stress hormone cortisol. High cortisol levels over a long period can be harmful, contributing to many psychosocial diseases such as depression, anxiety, reduced immune response, and worsening cardiovascular conditions.2 To combat these feelings of stress, what avenues can we take to improve our health?
To answer this question, let us first define what it means to be healthy. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines holistic health as an approach to wellness that simultaneously addresses health’s physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual components.3 Becoming healthy implies that we are taking action to improve our health, which is essential in re-establishing equilibrium. The field of art is a unique outlet that deserves its moment in the spotlight. From the earth’s first inhabitants to the human race present in the 21st century, art has placed its fingerprints on nearly everything that surrounds us, allowing us to embrace our creativity to the full extent. Tang and colleagues performed a cross-cultural study showing that there has been growing evidence over the last ten years that artistic endeavors aid recovery from illnesses or surgical procedures.4 Art is expressed in four primary routes: music, visual arts, writing, and dance.
Music has become one of the most prominent and easily accessible sources of entertainment in our society today. Music has been proven to reduce the impact of anxiety disorder and gives pleasure to each listener, restoring balance to the individual’s emotions. It has also been used in pain modulation, allowing those with chronic pain to experience relief through music alone.3 Music therapy in cancer patients decreases their anxiety, increases their immune system, and reduces pain. Music also eases the activity in the brain, calming the immune system through the hypothalamus and amygdala, two of the structures within our brain that are strongly interconnected.3 Overall, this interconnection can bring forth key memories deep within us that allow us a moment of happiness, which can be crucial to patient recovery.
Another avenue within this field is visual arts. The visual arts allow feelings that may be too difficult to express in words. Many cancer patients have turned to visual art, incorporating their diagnosis into their past, present, and future to give meaning to their trials. Visual art has also shown value in an urban family medicine clinic; the management has given the staff the task of decorating their new clinic. They decided that they would allow anyone who had been in the clinic to paint the ceramic tiles with faces or different shapes and figures and display them in the new clinic. They set a schedule for each workshop and ended up with more than 500 tiles. These moments are allowed the patients, their families, and the clinic staff to share stories of heartbreak, despair, joy, and resiliency. After placing all the artwork throughout the clinic, many patients expressed appreciation for how they felt a sense of heightened care, not only as patients but as people.5 We can draw similarities to making a clinical diagnosis when viewing modern art. Some visual art provides a looking glass into the artist’s mind and is simplistic, but others have no clear meaning and move us into deep thought to determine the artist’s true motives. In the same light, patients can present with signs and symptoms pointing to a precise diagnosis or leave us ruling out many possibilities.6
Writing is another form of art that has become prominent in recent years. Whether it be novels or poetry, studies have shown that those who have written about traumatic experiences that they have witnessed show an increase in immune system functioning, reduced number of doctor visits, and other improvements to their overall physical health.5 In addition, writing allows better control over mood, an improvement of depressive symptoms, and the alleviation of perceived pain within affected individuals. Robert Carroll describes how individuals find themselves and gain meaningful insight into their troubles through poetry in his quote: “Our voices are saturated with who we are, embodied in rhythms, tonal variations, associations, images, and other somatosensory metaphors in addition to the content meaning of the words. Our voices are embodiments of ourselves, whether written or spoken. In times of extremity, we long to find words or hear another human voice letting us know that we are not alone”.7 Another form of writing takes place through journaling. This type of writing allows us to access the unconscious mind and links to many aspects of our psyche, such as creativity and self-awareness.3
Last but certainly not least is the artistic avenue of dance. Whether folk or hip-hop, the dance movements allow unity within the mind, body, and soul. The link between these three entities increases motor activity while focusing on nonverbal communication. This form of artistic expression has been shown to alleviate symptoms of anxiety and depression, improving relationships with other people and significantly improving their quality of life.1,3
The healing nature of the art needs to start at the personal level with the motivation to balance the professional and personal lives of medical professionals. Wellness programs for medical professionals must begin with departments, institutions, state medical societies, and national and international societies. Here at the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) Anesthesiology department, we started a wellness program for department members by giving wellness lectures.8 Also, we encouraged people to show their passion outside the medical profession. We published their love for art, handcraft work, music, photography various other artworks in the department newsletter (The Pulse) from staff members.9 (Figure 1) At the Institution level, UMMC encourages the team through a medical humanities journal (The Mosaic) and healing arts program to provide a supportive, healing environment for patients, families and care givers.10 (Figure 2) The uniqueness of each featured artwork and photography shows the diversity that fills the hallways of our hospital. The scientific journal of the Mississippi State Medical Association focuses on the art and practice of medicine for medical professionals.11 It encourages medical professionals across Mississippi to share their passion for arts and medical knowledge and publish them monthly. Multiple national and international medical societies and Journals encourage medical professionals to share their thoughts and arts to improve wellness among medical professionals.12
Our artwork is just a tiny portion of who we are and reflects the valuable skill sets that allow each person to provide enhanced patient care. Although uncertainty seemed to become our norm, a unique approach to healing has been shown through art. The more we can tap into our creative reservoirs, the more we will be able to understand the true healing power of art in medicine.