Observation is a nurse’s most important skill. No matter which hospital unit they work in, nurses must be attentive to patients’ needs, sensitive to their symptoms and aware of their emotional state. While nurses typically undergo clinical training in medical centers, VCU’s students further hone their critical eyes at an art museum.
That’s the thinking behind Art of Nursing, a program that began in 2012 and has since served more than 1,000 nursing students. The program pairs art education students and faculty from VCUarts with nursing students for visits to museums and galleries like the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The art students challenge their nursing peers to conduct slower and deeper engagements with works of art. Conversations speculate on the lives of figures in a painting, or the message communicated by a sculptor—what Art Education chair Sara Wilson McKay calls “evidence-based looking.” In turn, this training strengthens their ability to empathize with patients, to investigate subtle signs of discomfort and determine what care they need.
“We emphasize close looking, first and foremost, and helping them trust their eyes,” says McKay, who launched the Art of Nursing. “A lot of people’s first impulses in a museum is to look at the label. The research on how long people spend in front of a work of art is between three and seven seconds. So, we slow that down. We might, in an hour and a half session, only look at three or four pieces of art.”
The class serves two distinct types of students during the year. A spring semester course is part of the traditional nursing curriculum, while a summer offering is part of the School of Nursing’s Accelerated Bachelor’s of Science program, which is aimed at non-nursing graduates pursuing a career change. These two groups of students can vary significantly in age and experience, leading to a wide variety of candid discussions in class.
“It’s hard to predict where the group will take it,” says Patrick Carter (BFA ’15), a graduate student in the art education program and an Art of Nursing instructor. He’s worked with groups from many different areas of the hospital, from nursing students in the secure care unit who treat incarcerated patients, to students in intensive care.
“One of my favorite conversations was about Buddha Watching TV by Nam June Paik,” says Carter. In the 1974 piece, a Buddha sculpture is watching a television which is broadcasting the feed from a camera pointed back at the statue. “So, it’s looking at itself. The group that I was working with was from the ICU, and they immediately said, ‘We hate this. We don’t think it’s art.’”
Carter pressed them to elaborate, to consider the artist’s intentions and the theme of self-reflection. The conversion steadily led to the importance of self-reflection in nursing, and how to cope with personal trauma and stress while caring for others. Soon, two of the students shared that they had witnessed a patient die that morning in a hospital room full of family photos. For one student, the patient’s reflections on their life helped them process that difficult moment; for the other, it made it harder to disassociate themselves from it.
“It was a very intense conversation,” says Carter, “but it was totally unexpected and, for me, a really beautiful moment. The artwork helped them process what they were learning in the hospital and what they were going through, and helped them see how the ideas in the artwork could connect to some of the things they’re already thinking about and doing. I was so surprised we ended up in that place, and half of us were crying. I was crying.”
The partnership between the schools of the Arts and Nursing might be unexpected to some, but others argue it’s a natural fit. In fact, the model has been so successful, it was extended to first-year medical students through a new elective, Medicine, Arts, and the Humanities.
“Medicine and the arts deal with the same thing—the human condition,” says Dr. John E. Nestler, VCUarts’ inaugural physician-scientist in residence at VCUarts, who developed and taught the elective. “They seek to heal the body and heal the soul. The bringing together of art and medicine allows both artists and medical professionals to be better.”
But the Art of Nursing isn’t just a powerful learning experience for nursing and medical students—it’s also inspiring for future art educators. The shared discussions in front of each work of art not only reveal how nurses can better serve their patients, but also how teachers can better serve their students.
“Being a facilitator for Art of Nursing has helped me see my role as a facilitator,” says Carter. “And I think it’s made me better at asking questions. Teaching isn’t so much the telling of information, but guiding students to that understanding through questions.”
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