One of the techs at Bridges today greeted me with a "TGIF" but I was only able to quietly reply with a little laugh because it in fact did not feel like a Friday to me. Today was my first day of SRP in Tucson for the week. (If you're new and not aware of my schedule, I spend two days in Tucson each week, eight hours a day in St. Mary's Hospital).
So, needless to say, I was fresh and awake for a day of work today. Unfortunately though, my mentor, Ms. Endreson, greeted me this morning with the news that she was feeling a bit under the weather. Around 9:30 she told me she was going to have to go home and rest. So I was left in the art room at Bridges. Just me, myself, and art supplies...I suppose I'm pretty used to that.
Anyway, I figured I would use this post to give you all a couple visuals. I wasn't able to do any group work today, but I got some work done on that special game. So for your viewing pleasure here is a lovely panoramic of the art room we usually work in:
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| Yes, there is exercise equipment in the corner. No, we do not use it for our art activities. |
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| The Value Game |
But what do little cards with values on them have to do with art therapy? Well the twist I have added to the game is a visual counterpart to each value card. I've spent a huge amount of time hunting down visual representations of all 100 values. Ms. Endreson and I are curious to see what a difference these visuals will make. When asked to place each value under a category, either "Very Important To Me" or "Not Very Important To Me," will the patients rank the white cards with words the same way they rank the pictures? What extra layer of importance will a certain value have when a patient sees it in picture form? There are a number of questions I am so anxious to have answered soon. I'll keep you all updated.
I have a feeling this activity will be really interesting to see used with the geriatric patients as well because 1. it requires very little effort on the patient's side and 2. can easily bring up memories and/or stories that these patients tend to love to share.
I spent the rest of my day in the hospital reading a bunch of art therapy articles. (The hospital cafeteria is a surprisingly good place for me to focus...maybe it's all the chatting of the nurses that's strangely calming). One of the articles I found particularly fascinating was "Art Therapy With a Hemodialysis Patient: A Case Analysis" by Miki Nishida and Jane Strobino. The abstract of the report can be read below:
Art therapy has been used to support the coping skills of patients with various medical illness. The purpose of this case study was to examine the usefulness of art therapy in promoting communication and positive sense of well-being in a hemodialysis patient. The participant was a 57-year-old Caucasian female who had been treated with hemodialysis for the past 3 years. Two art therapy sessions per week were provided for 4 weeks. The participant was able to express enjoyment with her artistic expressions and challenge herself to learn something new. Following completion of art therapy, the participant indicated a feeling of accomplishment and an increased sense of control and self-confidence. Although these results cannot be generalized, they are worthy of further investigation. Thus, application of art therapy with other hemodialysis patients is recommended.
The article went into incredible detail about each session of therapy the patient went through and I loved the way all the data was presented. Not only did I recognize a number of similarities between this study and the Bridges sessions, but I also got several examples of what to look for in an individual art therapy session, something I hope to be able to do soon at Bridges. We will have to see what the future holds!
Until next time,
Tia
Oh dear, I hope Ms. Endreson gets better soon! So for the game, will you have patients rank the values with words/pictures separately, without knowing that they correspond?
ReplyDeleteThanks for your awesome comments, Daria! I love that you are so quick to respond whenever I post something :) You are absolutely correct about the game. The key is that they sort the words and pictures separately and then we compare the differences between the two versions. Of course, I know which picture corresponds to which value, but the patients do not know that at the time when they are sorting.
ReplyDeleteSounds like an interesting game, Tia. I think I misunderstood it until I read your comment above. So they sort the words separately from the images? It would also be interesting to see how they sort the words by themselves, versus how they would sort the cards if the words and images were glued together (value words vs. value words plus art).
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of storycorp, which I love, I just heard they released a mobile phone app that lets you record your own interviews which will be uploaded to the Library of Congress automatically... might be interesting to do interviews with some of your patients: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/storycorps/id359071069?mt=8
So individually, you could gauge the well-being of patient's just be glancing at what they rank as important or non-important?
ReplyDeleteHi Alfred! So I explained a bit more about the value game in my most recent post, but it really isn't a gauge of well-being as much as a tool for improving well-being. The patients' choices of important and non important aren't as significant as the action of actually making decisions and prioritizing things. If the game is a gauge of anything, it's a gauge of how effective images are at prompting patients to make those sorts of decisions and to reflect on themselves.
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