About Perspectives
OOOH! has become quite massive. Massive in terms of numbers of works currently hosted, but massive also in terms of the range of issues and the range of media with which it speaks. Perspectives is our attempt to bring order to the mayhem. Each work in the collection is allocated a perspective. We located perspectives in five groups, each of which has sub-themes.
Home Front
Narratives of family and identity issues are paramount in these works. Early years students often dealt with things in relation to what we term the ‘home front’. This reflects the relative proximity of life at home. Topics include sibling love, siblings lost, ill grandparents, parental love gone wrong or gone to drink. Some write in the language of home. They also share their personal experiences of physical and mental ill health.
My Family
The ground from which we grew
Who am I?
Medics question their roles, values and identities
Wounded Healer
Being ill, receiving care and adapting to persistent problems
Clinical Attachments
Clinical experience is the main overarching theme and works wander far. Students rail against perceived hypocrisy, appreciate colleagues from other disciplines, celebrate the fortitude of the infirm, and describe memorable home visits. They tell us about their first independent professional relationships and the delight and difficulties they bring. They deal with patients’ identity in the abstract and in the system and share how their own nascent professional identities grow and conflict.
Does it have to be this way?
The medical system and how it handles those in its clutches)
Doctor Watching
Watching the medical drama unfold
Under the Skin
What is it really like to be a patient?
Cut Adrift
The cord is cut – reflections on going solo in medical consultation)
Doors of Perception
The collection, called ‘Doors of Perception’, contains examples of vigorous flexing of the imaginal muscle: patients in the foetal position in the waiting room; a visualisation of trigeminal neuralgia; Haikus on depression, the search for hope in extreme adversity; the knot as a metaphor of extreme complexity; imagined conversations between a wife and dying husband; a humorous depiction of living with hemianopia.
Bone Deep
Visceral encounters with the blood and guts and beauty of embodiment
Out of Our Heads
Art at the edge. Forms and texts pushing the boundaries
Heads and Hearts
When the head says one thing and the heart says another
Patient Perspectives
This collection reveals what really matters to patients in their everyday lives and their relationships to well-being. ‘Voices of experience’ provides critical insights into the fragile complexity of intimate consultations along with visceral insider accounts of hospital experiences. Patient participants in Arts and Health community practices suggest that engagement in creativity may support those living with chronic illness. Increasingly, creative methodologies are valued as participatory vehicles to align patient and healthcare perspectives in progressive medical research.
Family and Friends
Acknowledging those who sustain us in challenging times
Voices of Experience
Insights from across the healthcare spectrum
The Creative Process
This process, which draws on unexpected reservoirs of experience and imagination, is radically different from students’ usual experience on the medical course, which is mainly concerned with the acquisition of pre-existing knowledge. Processing experiences through the arts – students find a safe means to interrogate the intersection between personal and biomedical, extend their creative repertoires, develop confidence in holding multiple perspectives and deepen their medical knowledge through collaborative arts enquiries.
Arts in Education
The why, the how and the what of the Arts in Medicine
Musing on the Muse
Stories of engagement, disengagement and enchantment