Healing Through Art
Health Arts Network at Duke brings art to patients at Duke Hospital
Thursday, May 28, 2009
DURHAM, N.C. -- Inevitably, something extraordinary happens when Duke Hospital patients encounter art, says Olivia Woodford, director of the Health Arts Network at Duke (HAND).
Once, while escorting a violin player through the surgical intensive care unit, a nurse ran up to Woodford and the musician.
“She told us there was a woman at the end of the hallway smiling. She had been in the ICU for two weeks and was conscious but not responsive, and this was the first time she had been responsive to anything,” Woodford recalls.
The violinist went to the woman’s room and played his instrument at her door. The patient’s husband explained they were from Washington, D.C., where they frequently attended the opera and symphony.
“She had the most beatific look on her face,” Woodford says. “She never opened her eyes and she didn’t move, but her face was so full of light.”
For more than 30 years, HAND has brought the literary, visual and performing arts to staff, visitors, patients and their families at Duke Hospital. Its programs include the Touchable Art Gallery and a traveling Art Cart at the Duke Eye Center, as well as an artist-in-residence program that facilitates regular performances at patient bedsides and in waiting areas. HAND also curates thousands of original artworks done almost entirely by North Carolina-based artists, and places an original piece of art in every patient room.
Grey Brown has served as literary arts coordinator at Duke Hospital since the 1980s. She offers group poetry and journal writing to patients, hosts a bi-annual poetry contest and facilitates weekly lunchtime readings that are open to the public.
“When you get people animated in language and they have the chance to tell their story it restores them and returns their humanity,” Brown says. “Writing gives patients a chance to feel connected to the world beyond the hospital.”
“This is a program that has become part of the fabric of the health care environment here,” says Woodford. “Duke is acknowledging the emotional stress and demands of being in a hospital, and art is a profound and effective way of addressing [that stress] in a non-threatening and uplifting way.”
To find out more about HAND events that are open to the public, visit: hand.duhs.duke.edu.
