Discovering, exploring and creating connections
A storyteller, a musician and a quilter aren’t the typical staff walking the halls of a hospital. But through UAB’s Arts in Medicine program, seven artists in residence are part of an effort to take care of patients’ emotional needs alongside their physical ones.
“We really strive to meet the needs of the whole person. So we know that we have wonderful surgeons and other physicians and nurses that are treating the biomedical conditions, but our focus is on the mind, the body and spirit,” Program Director Kimberly Kirklin said.
A Vestavia Hills resident, Kirklin has worked for Alys Stephens Center, which runs the Institute for Arts in Medicine (AIM) program, for 16 years. A musician herself, Kirklin started in education and outreach for Alys Stephens before launching AIM in 2013.
She said similar programs are in place at other U.S. hospitals, as a patient’s mental or emotional condition can affect how they heal from the physical condition that landed them in the hospital.
The AIM program has multiple components. It includes public musical performances in UAB’s medical buildings, art installations, programs for hospital staff and workshops for hands-on art such as quilting.
The quilting workshops, Kirklin said, have been especially beneficial for mothers in the high-risk obstetrics and neonatal intensive care units. While they are at the hospital for weeks or months, the patients can work on a project that is all their own and can be given to their baby when they go home. It also creates a community of women, some of whom are far from home, to support each other.
“It creates just a little community,” Kirklin said.
“It happens when you bring art into a room full of people.”
AIM also has seven professional artists in residence, from storytelling and poetry to dance and movement, who work at patients’ bedsides. Kirklin said they have a lot of support from the nursing staff, who will occasionally call to request that an AIM artist visit a particular patient.
“They could be bored, they could be sad, they could be anxious; and again, while it’s not our goal to eliminate that, we can offer them an opportunity to direct their focus on something else and to acknowledge them,” she said.
Kirklin said these artists in residence are chosen not only for their artistic skill, but also for having a “helper” personality that will enable them to connect with patients and “set the ego aside.” They must shadow another artist and be critiqued by AIM staff before they can begin participating solo.
“It’s not about them — it’s about being in the present moment with the individual with which they’re working,” she said.
The art itself is often secondary to the human connection, Kirklin said. A story or piece of art might connect with part of the patient’s own life experiences, leading to deeper conversation and a distraction from day-to-day life in a hospital.
“We’re just connecting with that person as a human being with a whole lifetime of experiences. So they’re really just being heard, and we’re not giving any shots or having them take any medication,” she said.
The impact art can have on patients is subjective, Kirklin said.
While UAB has been supportive of AIM, she said the lack of hard evidence and research can be an obstacle to including an artistic program in a hospital budget. To bring some scientific research into her program, Kirklin decided to lean on a familiar face: her dad.
James Kirklin is a retired cardiac surgeon who now directs the Kirklin Institute for Research in Surgical Outcomes. He said he has seen a mindset shift in the medical world, where quality of life is valued as much as longevity.
“I’m a quantitative person, so it’s very important to provide evidence, is this really effective?” he said.
“There’s a real opportunity to become more academic in this endeavor.”
The father-daughter pair is working on a study that compares quality of life survey results between patients who do and do not participate in AIM activities.
There is a national standardized survey called Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS), James Kirklin said, and patient responses to that survey are one of the determining factors in receiving Medicare funding. If the Kirklins’ research can prove that artistic programs lead to consistently better HCAHPS scores, it could demonstrate the program’s value in a tangible, statistical way.
“Obviously, that has evidence base now for being a valuable resource for the hospital,” James Kirklin said.
Positive results would also open up opportunities for national grants, Kimberly Kirklin said.
“It’s all those things that the arts do that are hard to, again, quantify, but we just see in reactions from patients,” she said.
Kimberly Kirklin said she grew up around the medical world due to her father’s job and, though her career path took a different direction, she has enjoyed the chance for their two fields to work together. She noted that two of the AIM artists in residence also have parents who are medical professionals.
“I never thought I would be part of the medical world because I was always an artist. So when it came full circle, I was excited to venture into his world a little,” she said.
Learn more about the Institute for Arts in Medicine at alysstephens.org/connect/arts-in-medicine/.