UBC student Michiko Maruyama’s Spirit of the Liver blends Japanese and Haida influences to create a liver design. Even for busy medical students, art can be good for the soul and make them better doctors.
Even for busy medical students, art can be good for the soul – and make them better doctors.
Carol Ann Courneya, assistant dean of student affairs at the University of British Columbia's medical school, points to studies that suggest exposure to art makes physicians better communicators, more empathetic and enhances their diagnostic skills.
A study she co-authored, to be published this year, concludes that making art has other benefits.
"It allowed them to bear witness to the suffering of others … and helped them advocate for change," says Courneya, an associate professor with a background in cardiovascular physiology (and an amateur photographer).
She is also founding director of White Coat Warm Art, an annual juried exhibition at the Canadian Conference on Medical Education, featuring works by medical students and faculty.
This year's show includes works such as Dalhousie student Taryn O'Neill's Skull, a hand-quilled paper sculpture resembling a cross-section of a skull; UBC student Csilla Egri's A look back forward: iterations of self through time, a mixed-media work that imagines her elderly, hospitalized self looking back on her medical career at various stages; and UBC student Michiko Maruyama's Spirit of the Liver, which blends Japanese and Haida influences to create a liver design.
Courneya recalls one student saying, "'I cannot not do art – it's so vitally important to my balance.' So how do they find time to do it? They just do."
White Coat Warm Art is at the Hyatt Regency in Vancouver, April 25-April 28.
Marsha Lederman