Melissa Owens, music therapist for the VCU Health Arts in Healthcare, entertains 3-year-old Taelayah Brooks-Smith. (Photo by Jay Paul)
VCU Health has honed the power of the arts by incorporating creativity into health care. What started as an idea to aid in physical, mental and emotional recovery in 1986 from the late Murry N. DePillars, the former VCU dean of arts, has evolved into VCU Health Arts in Healthcare. Today, the department offers a variety of services to patients and team members, including art lessons, kinetic imaging, music therapy and theater.
The arts program has expanded over the years under the guidance of its director, Philip Muzi Branch, who became director in 2005, but has longstanding ties with the university. He was born at the shuttered St. Philip Hospital, the medical school’s onetime facility for Black Richmond residents during the Jim Crow Era. Branch also secured his undergraduate and graduate degree at VCU School of the Arts. After working in arts education, he decided he wanted to bring art into the medical field.
“The hospital has three galleries here where we show work of local artists and regional artists,” Branch says. “I had a show here with my artwork, and when I was taking the show down in 2005, the director told me he was leaving.”
Philip Muzi Branch, director of VCU Health Arts in Healthcare (Photo by Jay Paul)
Branch saw his opportunity and decided to apply for the position. The previous director was able to recommend him for the job and the rest was history, Branch says.
For nearly 18 years, he has helped bridge the gap between arts and health care through various resources. All of the art-based services offered in the department are intentional, and used to develop a unique approach to the healing process.
“The traditional medical model is a very reactive process,” Branch says. “Our model in the arts is we want to be proactive. We try to educate the patients and staff about self-care and holistic care, being engaged with the entire patient meaning physically, spiritually and intellectually.” The department creates a proactive atmosphere that works to treat all levels of care by ensuring that five specific areas are being met.
First, a healing environment is established to benefit of patients, health care workers and visitors by placing art throughout the buildings, exhibits in art galleries and hosting performances by local musicians in the lobby every Wednesday. Caring for the caregivers is highlighted through bonding and resilience activities to create a better workspace. In turn, caregivers help guarantee patient needs are being met. Patient care through art instruction, music, and more is the main focus of the department. Research and education are the final areas the program tackles. Professionals continually conduct research to examine how the arts are affecting patients, and impacting the healing process. Then, the program presents opportunities for nursing staff, doctors and other medical team members to learn about the benefits of arts in health.
COVID-19 put a halt to the usual ways the department functions, but they adapted in any way they could. From customized buttons with faces of staff so that patients can safely see behind masks to online mindfulness meditation sessions, the department creatively maintained its mission.
Arts Coordinator Alexis Shockley (center) with 12-year-old patient Cyrus Wise and his mother, Dana Wise (Photo by Jay Paul)
As of 2022, the department has reintroduced services that were altered due to the pandemic, Branch says. Department members are once again able to fully provide artistic services to aid in patient care.
Arts Coordinator Alexis Shockley says that she was still able to visit patients during the pandemic but noticed a difference in her work. As the sole member of the art program, Shockley tackles any art related project. She helps select artwork for buildings, hosts art lessons with inpatients and outpatients, in addition to staff members, and aids in cultural celebrations.
When working with patients, Shockley will read their chart to gain background information and speak with the patient about their interests. Each case is different, and some patients have certain limitations. Shockley relies on many different mediums including clay, watercolor, sewing, acrylic painting and making jewelry to help her cater to each patient.
During the pandemic, her services took on a different meaning. “I was a lot of people’s only visitor because we had no visitors for so long,” Shockley says. “I found myself going to see patients and they just wanted to talk, so I was the person to talk to with a little art on the side. Just a person to be there with them during a scary time.”
The traditional medical model is a very reactive process. Our model in the arts is we want to be proactive.
—Philip Muzi Branch, Director of VCU Health Arts in Healthcare
Whether during the pandemic or now, the benefits of using art in patient treatment is apparent and often immediate, Shockley says. “I’ve had patients where I’ve gone into the room, the lights have been off and they’re laying down doing nothing,” she says. “By the end of it, the curtains are open, the lights are on and family members are laughing.”
The art experience not only helps build a better environment for the patient by shedding positivity but also allows for patients to exercise freedom. “I always say that I’m the one person that comes into the room where I let the patient choose what they want,” Shockley says. “They have a say in their care and they get to make a choice. They get to make something beautiful while they’re here whether it’s for the long term to decorate their room, to make something for a loved one or just learn a new craft.”
The benefits of art go beyond the patient, it also helps medical providers learn how to improve their own work. Creative investigator and artist-in-residence at the VCU Department of Surgery, Sterling Hundley uses art to depict medical scenes for educational purposes.
“There was something very special about being able to see patterns, things that were happening and technologies that were being used,” Hundley says. “Seeing points where things were smooth and points where there was friction and using creativity to approach presenting solutions to some of those problems.”
Hundley sits, observes and documents surgical procedures in his sketchbook to try and understand how to improve patient engagement and the overall interaction between the hospital and patients.
“There’s always room for interjection of humanity and creativity,” Hundley says. “Meeting the doctors and seeing the practice, they’re immensely giving with their time and their care. There’s a lot that falls into the realm of the scientific method but there’s a lot of creativity that they have to introduce.”
Semi Ryu (second from right), a professor of kinetic imaging who creates virtual avatars for patients, works with students. (Photo by Steven Casanova courtesy VCU)
Semi Ryu, professor of kinetic imaging at VCU Arts and associate professor of internal medicine at VCU School of Medicine, who has introduced art as a form of medicine into her work.
In 2002, Ryu had the idea to integrate the creative way she expresses herself and weave it into her work in the medical field. “I was really interested in puppetry, and I was using a virtual puppet for my storytelling performance,” Ryu says. “It can be really beneficial for the people in the community because I drew out my personal storytelling, I experienced emotional release and really released some kind of oppressive state of myself mediated by the virtual body.”
Ryu took notice of the positive therapeutic benefits and healing potential of using an avatar, so she decided to create one for patients. Controlling the avatar through their own motions, which are projected on a large screen, patients can star as themselves or create a different profile and setting for them to access virtually. Throughout her time at VCU, she has helped a multitude of people using virtual reality technology.
Patients in palliative care, such as cancer patients, use the virtual body to express their lives and feelings. While the avatar provides an outlet for them, it also helps analyze feasibility, abilities and the quality of life of each patient.
When Ryu worked with older adults at the senior center, she saw how the avatar allowed them to talk about their childhood and traumatic experiences in an easier, safer way. “It really allowed them to open up and tell a more personal narrative,” Ryu says. “It ended up making them cry and having an emotional release.”
Younger patients, such as children struggling with mental health, have also used the avatar to help with their care. Patients of all ages with different ailments have all seen positive results thanks to Ryu’s creativity.
“If you talk about your negative experience using your own body it’s totally overwhelming,” Ryu says. “It’s hard to open up, but the distancing effect is key to the participant being in a safe space. … Instead of their own physical body, they use a virtual body that can speak for themselves.”
Apart from using an avatar, patients can benefit from other artistic expressions such as music. Melissa Owens along with three members of the music therapy team work with patients who are referred by the medical and care team. As a board-certified music therapist, Owens is able to assess the patient and establish a treatment plan that incorporates music to help the patient deal with a variety of their concerns.
“We are a unique field in that we are not teaching music per se, but we are using music as a medium to accomplish another goal,” Owens says. “Being in the hospital can create a great deal of anxiety and stress. Our patients often need help coping with the fact that they’re in the hospital, they may have received a new diagnosis or they may be dealing with a fear of a medical procedure. Our goals as music therapists is to help make the patient experience the best it can be given the circumstance.”
What may appear to be a bedside musical performance is actually a carefully planned healing session. “The goal is not to perform for a patient, the goal is to use our live music to bring about a positive change either in the patient’s emotional state or their physical state,” Owens says.
Owens and her teammates are professionals, trained in a variety of instruments used to create different musical moods. They manipulate the qualities of music, such as the tempo or volume, based on the patient response. A patient’s potential negative associations to a song is also considered to avoid any harm.
Music, like many other forms of art, has a healing effect when used the right way. “It can be used to help patients manage their emotions, improve stress tolerance, relax and stay present in the moment during a procedure,” Owens says.
The stressful environment found at hospitals affects both patients and medical providers. While they experience different types of stress, medical staff can benefit from the arts just like their patients.
Elizabeth Byland, a professor of improv with VCU Arts and a director of applied health improv, uses improv classes to help medical professionals develop better communication skills. That development help providers better communicate with team members, as well as with their patients.
“Health care is centered on a human-to-human relationship,” Byland says. “Because it’s an ever-evolving industry, it’s incredibly important to maintain that strong foundation of human connection. As it evolves, sometimes that connection can get a little muddy.”
Byland says that the human connection falls short when communication gets lost, something she witnessed a lot of during the pandemic.
“Improv is practicing listening, being present with another individual, listening to what they have just said and being affected by what they said,” Byland says.
Byland is helping medical students and current medical professionals to practice critical skills that they need in order to be effective in providing health care to patients.
Whether it’s theater, music, kinetic imaging or art, different members at VCU Health can experience great benefits from bringing arts into medicine. The department hopes to expand and continue to emphasize an artistic approach to health care.
“We do what we can with the resources we have, and it’s very invigorating,” Branch says. “When I see the results of patients, when they are smiling, you see that the arts have made a difference in their life.”
