Music and fine art lift the mood of patients and visitors
Iva Fattorini, MD, believes that fine art and music make good medicine. That’s why, as Executive Director of Cleveland Clinic’s new Arts & Medicine Institute, she is infusing the hospital environment with the energy and vitality of the arts.
Dr. Fattorini joined Cleveland Clinic as the Director of International eHealth, a role in which she helped connect international patients to Cleveland Clinic physicians. Spending time with these patients and their families, she realized the importance of providing ways to reduce their stress and bring them hope.
Evolution, Revolution, Resolution, © 1989 by Nam June Paik
Color lithographs donated by Jay and Jean Kislak in honor of Dr. Brian P. Griffin through the Art in Medicine Program
“We want to awaken the soul of the hospital so people can feel it,” Dr. Fattorini says.
She’s already well on her way. Just like visiting an art museum, visitors are able to pick up a wand at the front desk and take an hour-long, self-guided audio tour of the prints, paintings and sculptures on display throughout Cleveland Clinic. Music therapy is offered to patients to decrease pain, relieve stress and aid in the recovery of speech and gait after a stroke. Art therapy is being introduced to heart patients, cancer patients and children. And on New Year’s Eve, the institute brought a live broadcast of the New York Philharmonic’s performance at Lincoln Center into the rooms of patients and onto a big screen in the lobby.
Artist and sculptor Roger Powell was among the crowd that night as he awaited word on his brother-in-law’s heart valve replacement. He and his nephew, sketchpads in hand, made pen-and-ink drawings of the lobby. The two had spent part of their day on the rooftop of the Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Pavilion enjoying the panoramic views of the city, attending a meditation class and enjoying a chamber music concert, part of the institute’s “Concerts in the Sky” series.
Mr. Powell was wowed. “All of this builds the human spirit by giving hope, making people smile.”
Other hospitals and universities across the country also realize the importance of the spirit of their institutions. Betty Haskin, an arts coordinator at Duke University Medical Center and a staff member of the Health Arts Network at Duke (HAND), is setting up a display in the Touchable Art Gallery for visually impaired patients. She says such programs remind patients that they have a life outside their disease and remind them of their humanity.
Evolution, Revolution, Resolution, © 1989 by Nam June Paik
Color lithographs donated by Jay and Jean Kislak in honor of Dr. Brian P. Griffin through the Art in Medicine Program
Dr. Fattorini and her colleagues are implementing new ideas. The institute supports research on the effects of the arts on the human body, both in and out of the hospital setting, and will continue collaborations with local, national and international organizations to promote the marriage of medicine and the arts. “I’d like to see a day when the fine and performing arts in all their energy would be an integral part of every hospital,” she says.
Story originally appeared in the Summer 2009 issue of Cleveland Clinic Magazine.
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