Health Humanities IM 502
Welcome to our online gallery! This page has been created to provide a platform to celebrate and share the wonderful creative projects of University of Illinois College of Medicine students who have completed a two-week Health Humanities IM 502 elective. Click on each panel to engage the art and read the student’s artist’s statement.
Margaret Mary Schmit: Crochet Memorial
Artist Statement: So many of the patients that we see during the course of our training have a unique and profound effect on who we become as doctors. They teach us lessons that we could [...]
Laura Krivicich: “The Yellow Monster”
Artist Statement: This is the story of how I grew up to become an orthopedic surgeon. This is also the story of things I wish every doctor would keep in mind, including myself, as [...]
Emily Nepomuceno: “The Process of Being Well / Works in Progress”
Artist Statement: The goal of this project was to ultimately show different ways that my own small community experiences art and humanities as a way of staying well and whole, and to encourage others [...]
Chris Viamontes: “COVID and Nature: A Journey Through Quarantine”
Artist Statement: My piece is a photographic exploration as quarantine forced me to realize the importance of nature and the outdoors in my wellness and resiliency. In the form of a slide deck, I [...]
Tanya Magana: “The Interpreting Moth”
Artist Statement: I wrote about an experience I had while rotating in a dermatology clinic from two different points of view. During the encounter, I observed a patient undergo a skin biopsy to confirm [...]
Carly Woodin: Wooden Sound Wave Sculpture
Artist Statement: I have always been a busybody who loves to work with their hands, so when COVID struck in March of 2020, I felt a little lost. I began to take up woodworking [...]
Hoda Sayegh: “isolation comes from insula which means island”
Artist Statement: During the months of isolation during the 2020 pandemic, I was surprised by a shift in my body language. This language shifted from one of love and openness to a language closed [...]
Marie-Louise Kloster: “Liver in Bloom”
Artist Statement: I enjoy working with textile arts because they have another dimension. They are tactile. They are rooted in something with utility. But whether weaving a tapestry or embordering a gown or crocheting [...]
Kyler Shin: “One Disease, Many Illnesses”
Artist Statement: A medical school course called Health, Illness, and Society introduced me to the terms "disease" and "illness," terms I thought I had mastered in elementary school. They sound awfully similar, right? Well...not [...]
Brianna Stewart: “Wonder”
Artist Statement: I once had a patient who would only ask me questions about her condition and the course of her treatment. I wasn’t the student following her case, but she would pull me [...]
Why Art and Humanities in Medical Education?
Medicine is a science and an art. Increasingly, medical educators are promoting the value of incorporating arts and humanities in medical curricula, as evidenced by the Association of American Medical Colleges’ monograph entitled “The Fundamental Role of Arts and Humanities (FRAHME) in Medical Education” (2020).
This elective, which is conducted remotely and open to M3 and M4 students across all campuses of the UICOM system, focuses on the application of creative arts and humanities disciplines to expand and enrich discourse about human health and well-being. These health humanities may take many forms, from the history of medicine to medical ethics, from literature and creative writing to music, film, and the visual arts. A portion of the instruction is dedicated to analysis and discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic through a health humanities lens. Students survey these forms together with the course director, Gina Pribaz, MFA, MA, and identify a form in which to realize a personal creative project. The assignment gives students wide latitude but ties back to the FRAHME Prism Model:
Create an artistic or analytic health humanities project that has as its aim one of the four functions of the FRAHME model for art and humanities in medical education: (1) mastering skills, (2) perspective-taking, (3) personal insight, and (4) social advocacy.
Please enjoy our online gallery! We hope these projects inspire you to think about health and well-being in ways that enhance the healthcare encounter for patients and physicians alike.