Regina is an artist, blogger and patient rights activist. She journeyed with her witty pop-culture inspired husband during his 11 week hospitalization in five facilities. She saw massive problems in patient data access, continuity of care and patient communication. She also saw that art was not being used to its full advantage within in healthcare facilities or online. After her husband's death, She began a mission to speak publicly about patient care and paint about the patient story within the larger conversation about health. She will discuss the myriad venues possible to create patient story art: city walls, upon a canvas or on the jacket back of a conference attendee.

1. What does art
have to do with medicine?
A patient perspective by Regina Holliday
HXD Conference Boston
March 26, 2012

2. Art.
That’s for kids, right?

3. Picture Books
Bedtime Stories
Family Television
Drawing, Painting
Dancing, Singing
Children immerse themselves in art.
They live art.
They learn from art,
and do not separate it from daily life.

4. Then there is design.
Good design is
beautiful,
functional
and creates space
for
growth
and
change.
Art within design can be the path itself or the weeds that grow between the cracks.

5. Art can be “safe.”
It can provide therapy for injured souls.
It can be contained
within waiting rooms’ closets
And rolling art carts.
Art can be pinned down upon a sheet of construction paper
Static,
Still
A waxwork of emotion.
It can be a moment of process with no intent.
Or it can be more.

6. Art can make clinical spaces “pretty.”
But as any child can tell you,
it can be dangerous to enter candy houses.
Art can be used to
mask the rotten
apple
or
it can be used
to
reveal it.

7. Art can compare hard data to soft data and apples to apples.

8. Art can provide a face to cold clinical statistics.
“During this hospital stay, how often was your pain well controlled?”

9. Are you ready to jump?
Are you ready to change the way you think about art within medicine?

10. Writing
on the
Wall.

11. Since the beginning of time, we have written on Walls.
Sometimes the writing was
official notices and history.
Sometimes it was
Graffiti
Or
Tagging.

12. Regina, the child
Sometimes the writing was a cry for help,
A plea for change,
Or simply the statement:
“I was here.”

13. How can an
outsider artist,
an enterprising start-up,
social media savvy doctor,
Send a message to us all?
They can Write it on a Wall.

14. Painting Advocacy meets
Social Media
Street art is truly the first global art movement fueled by the Internet.
–Marc and Sara Schiller, Wooster Collective, 2010

15. “Shouldn’t Art stick to what it does best-
the delivery of pleasure?
And forget about being a Paintbrush warrior.
Or, is it when the bombs are dropping we find out what art is really
for?”
-Power of Art by Simon Schama

16. This is the painting 73 cents.
This is the vital patient story, the social history , the sacred heart of Fred’s
ELECTRONIC MEDICAL RECORD.
And this painting, like the internet,
advocates 24 hours a day
and you cannot tell a wall to shut up.

17. On October 20th 2009 we dedicated the mural singing,
“Where do we go
from here?”

18. Patients spend much of their
days living in
Negative space.
Instead of being the subject
of attention
We are often the space around
The image of medicine.
The back ground
The prop

19. Look at children playing Doctor’s office.
One role is active, one role is passive
We teach our children how to be patients.

20. Healthcare is not Rainbows and Butterflies.

21. The Walking Gallery
Join a Walking Wall of Patient Stories

22. Street Art:
The more stickers that are out there the more important it seems.
The more important it seems, the more people want to know what it is.
The more they ask they ask each other.
It gains real power from perceived power. -Shepard Fairey

23. We can redefine expectations of the role of art in medicine
at every hospital, clinic and conference.

24. Let Patients Speak
We must encourage every committee,
conference and hospital board,
to actively recruit and include patients
in every aspect of the care process from
design to implementation to resolution.
Noting about us without us.
From the exam room to the board room.
Invite patients and you will include artists,
poets and writers in creating health policy.

25. Are you ready ? Art is what you make of it…
You can choose the role of art in medicine.
Choose wisely.
I hope to see you in the rabbit hole. ~ @ReginaHolliday