“I just received a cancer diagnosis, but for the 10 minutes I was sitting listening to you play, I forgot.”

Artists in Healthcare MB (AIHM) was established in 2001 with a vision to improve the patient, family and staff experience in healthcare while addressing the needs of the whole person through engagement with the arts. Some may think this vision to be soft or abstract, but the effect of having a guitarist play for you while you are having chemotherapy treatment or viewing a work of art while waiting for a procedure or test results is tangible and measurable.

Recently one of our musicians was playing in a clinic waiting area. As he was leaving, a woman tapped him on the shoulder and said, “I just received a cancer diagnosis, but for the 10 minutes I was sitting listening to you play, I forgot.” On another occasion a patient in palliative care heard the music coming from the end of the unit and came out to listen, with his wife. He asked if  a particular waltz could be played as he wanted to dance with her, and they danced down the halls of the palliative care unit together. These moments are but vignettes demonstrating that the arts do make a difference in healthcare. And they demonstrate why the organization exists for our board members and over 35 musicians and artists.

Whether we interact with patients through visual arts programs at bedside, bring the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra string quartet to play for residents in long term care, place student musicians in hospitals over the summer, or place an artist through a community residency program, or community partner as in our HIV/AIDS project, the result is the relief of anxiety and stress and the emergence of communication.

We have music programs at CancerCare Manitoba, St. Boniface and the Grace Hospitals year round, and new sites at Boundary Trails and Brandon Regional Health Centre. Student musicians get to hone their skills and learn the arts healing power at up to seven hospitals during the summer thanks to the Service Canada Summer jobs program.

We have an art at the bedside program in development at St. Boniface Hospital, funded by the Winnipeg Foundation, that is being implemented with rigor so that it can be replicated at other locations. At the Health Sciences Centre Rehabilitation’s Rheumatology ward, we work with a bedside program funded by the Arthritis Society of Manitoba that was designed and is run by volunteers who have arthritis. We also run an interactive art program for Day Patients and an Art Gallery funded by the HSC Foundation and the Prairie Palette Art Group.

In the Arthritis Centre, paintings and ceiling tiles have been designed for treatment and waiting rooms. One patient comment on a ceiling tile was: “I can’t describe how it makes me feel other than saying it has a hold on me and I can’t let it go. I have to come and see this painting many times during the day. I just have to see it. Like I say, it has a hold on me and I just can’t shake it”.

At St. Boniface’s Geriatric Rehabilitation, we have an interactive art program designed to encourage patient communication via storytelling. While there, look for the Hall of Rembrances where paintings, photographs and ceiling tiles reflect the patients' memories and stories. This year sees a new program at Jocelyn House with a harpist and a poet, and we will be partnering in a new Playback Theatre Community Development project with the Gas Station Arts Centre.

Artists in Healthcare Manitoba is pleased to have the support of the Province of Manitoba/Arts Branch as well as the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority.

Please see our website at: www.artistsinhealthcare.com