This study provides preliminary evidence that art-therapy-based supervision for end-of-life care workers can reduce burnout by enhancing emotional awareness and regulation, fostering meaning-making, and promoting reflection on death.

BackgroundTo provide patient-centred holistic care, doctors must possess good interpersonal and empathic skills. Medical schools traditionally adopt a skills-based approach to such training but creative engagement with the arts has also been effective. A novel arts-based approach may help medical students develop empathic understanding of patients and thus contribute to medical students’ transformative process into compassionate doctors. This study aimed to evaluate the impact of an arts-making workshop on medical student empathy.MethodsThis was a mixed-method quantitative-qualitative study. In the 2011–12 academic year, all 161 third year medical students at the University of Hong Kong were randomly allocated into either an arts-making workshop or a problem-solving workshop during the Family Medicine clerkship according to a centrally-set timetable. Students in the arts-making workshop wrote a poem, created artwork and completed a reflective essay while students in the conventional workshop problem-solved clinical cases and wrote a case commentary. All students who agreed to participate in the study completed a measure of empathy for medical students, the Jefferson Scale of Empathy (JSE) (student version), at the start and end of the clerkship. Quantitative data analysis: Paired t-test and repeated measures ANOVA was used to compare the change within and between groups respectively. Qualitative data analysis: Two researchers independently chose representational narratives based on criteria adapted from art therapy. The final 20 works were agreed upon by consensus and thematically analysed using a grounded theory approach.ResultsThe level of empathy declined in both groups over time, but with no statistically significant differences between groups. For JSE items relating to emotional influence on medical decision making, participants in the arts-making workshop changed more than those in the problem-solving workshop. From the qualitative data, students perceived benefits in arts-making, and gained understanding in relation to self, patients, pain and suffering, and the role of the doctor.ConclusionsThough quantitative findings showed little difference in empathy between groups, arts-making workshop participants gained empathic understanding in four different thematic areas. This workshop also seemed to promote greater self-awareness which may help medical students recognize the potential for emotions to sway judgment. Future art workshops should focus on emotional awareness and regulation.

To help art therapists work effectively with the realities of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), this special report brings together art therapists who have experience working in pandemics (Ebola, SARS), attending to health professionals, and building creative virtual communities. Art therapists can support recommended public health psychosocial guidelines by disseminating information, promoting expression and inspiration, challenging stigma, modulating media input, securing family connections, monitoring secondary traumatic stress, developing coping and resilience, maintaining relationships, and amplifying hope.

The objective of this qualitative research study was to discover how creating mandalas (art made in reference to a circle) might provide medical students with an opportunity for reflection on their current psychological state. As part of their year 3 family medicine rotation, medical students participated in an art-making workshop, during which, they created mandalas based on their current emotional state. Afterwards, they engaged in reflective writing and discussion. The responses of 180 students were analysed and coded according to the mandala classification framework ‘Archetypal Stages of The Great Round of Mandala’. The results indicated that students were actively struggling in integrating conflicting perspectives as they were attempting to reconcile their professional identity as doctors. Additional results pertaining to psychosocial characteristics included navigating difficult emotions, requiring nurturance, handling endings, contemplating existential concerns and managing stress. The study has implications for making use of mandala making within a Jungian framework as means for medical students to reflect on their emotional state and achieve psychological balance.