Stitched Up
Katherine Henderson
In my artwork I chose to draw a patient with their mouth sewn shut, the threaded needle in their hand. This image represents the patients who aren’t willing to talk, for a variety of reasons. Over the year, we spoke with a patient who was honest about feeling low, but there are many patients who won’t share this with their doctor. Maybe they don’t feel comfortable speaking openly, maybe they feel embarrassed, maybe they just aren’t ready to talk. People have many reasons to withhold. Whatever the reason, we need to accept that there are patients who will just not feel able to be open.
Furthermore, I decided to only draw the mouth, nose and hand of the patient in black and white. This is to symbolise that anyone can go through this and to also evoke a sense of disconnect. Whether you interpret this disconnect to be between the doctor and patient or within the patient themselves is up to the you as the viewer, but I’m sure we can agree that the drawing, by not being in entirety, leaves a sense of something being missing or lacking.
Last term we explored the idea of ‘yellow flags’, signs that a patient is not confident or hopeful about their treatment and how this can lead to worse outcomes. The hand holding the needle in my drawing represents not just the patients who aren’t able to open up, but the patients who, in some ways, hold themselves back. Once again, there can be many reasons for this: fear something might not help, lack of hope after lots of interventions have been tried or an issue has persisted for a long time, or even lack of motivation.
The power of the motivated, energized patient becomes so evident when we consider how a person’s own mindset can have such a drastic change on their health and outcomes. Just as someone has the ability to close themselves off, ‘sew their mouth shut’, they have the ability to reach out to others, take a step forward, and play an effective part in their own healthcare.
We are taught to follow a structure in our consultations, and as valuable as it is to have something to keep you on the right track and something to fall back on if you need it, it is also important to realise sometimes patients will not allow you to stick to that structure. Patients are people, and hence, will not conform to the neat order we expect them to talk or act in. I have learned that there are many challenges faced by doctors when it comes to helping a patient, and there can be even more obstacles faced by patients when it comes to receiving help. In the future, I hope to be open and understanding of all patients, especially those who are struggling with taking charge of their health or finding difficulty in being candid about their well-being.
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This is a really cool piece, Katherine! I’m doing some work on experiences of silence in mental health and it would be great to chat more about your thoughts on the matter.
This piece is truly evocative of the barriers which can arise in the doctor-patient relationship. Although the artist has drawn it as the patient having sewn their own mouth shut, I interpret this to represent the needle and thread the doctor can possess at times, knowingly or unknowingly sealing their patient’s voice, preventing them from speaking freely about their issues. This can be as a result of traumatic healthcare experiences where healthcare professionals have dismissed, disregarded or gaslighted their patient into thinking their issue is not of value, not big/bad enough, or not real. This then leads to the patient holding that trauma in every interaction they have thereafter, reflecting the sealed mouth the artist has very perfectly captured.
I found this piece fascinating. The concept of not being able to access patient information through them withholding this voluntarily or involuntarily is really interesting and key to achieving good consultations and positive outcomes for patients by tapping into this information. It shows the importance of building rapport with patients but also holding space for what they may not volunteer and poses interesting questions as to why this is the case and the impact on a consultation
I found this piece particularly impactful and appreciated the focus on the barriers in communication between a patient and a doctor in a consultation. I really appreciated the use of black and white and leaving parts empty as you mentioned in the blurb alongside this highlights the fact that it could be anyone going through this experience and it may be due to a large number of reasons.
I was drawn to this piece because I like how the meaning behind it can be perceived differently by different people. To a patient, it could be viewed as feeling they don’t have enough trust in their doctor to speak openly about their symptoms, but to a doctor, it could be viewed as the patient withholding information for other reasons. The disconnectedness of this piece highlights that anyone can feel like they can’t speak openly, including doctors to others about their own problems. Overall, this shows that communication produces the best outcomes in consultations, healthcare and general well-being.
Personally, I found the lack of personal details in the drawing to be striking. I believe that it strongly conveys how we never truly know what someone’s personal concerns are or the magnitude of them until they decide to share their intimate thoughts. The sharp needle and stitches also highlights how it is not easy for someone to open up about these personal feelings and it can feel like they are tightly sealed from the rest of the world. I believe that this is very applicable to clinical encounters as many conditions or concerns may seem embarrassing or away from the norm to talk about especially with a doctor you may have never met before. Difficulty to open up comes from a variety of factors such as trauma or a lack of motivation and cannot be pinpointed onto a specific reason which is why I believe that the generic feel of the monochrome palette is suitable.