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CommentsThe healing arts
More hospitals look to the creative power of artists
Coty Dolores Miranda
When heart disease weakened Mercedes Rialto* of Phoenix, a wife and mother of five, she entered Mayo Clinic Hospital where she stayed for three months, awaiting a heart transplant.
During that period, she was often visited by local jazz singer Vicki McDermitt, a musician with the Mayo Clinic’s Humanities in Medicine program – Sonata del Sol. Her talents and those of other professional musicians in the program help relieve patients’ anxieties and preoccupations.
“I admit my Spanish is poor, I’m an Irish girl, but I would sing Besame Mucho, and when I did, she’d reach out to her husband and stroke his hand or his hair. When her children came, we’d sing pop songs in English. We had a wonderful time,” she says.
“I believe music is God’s magic. You have to get it that there’s nothing you can fix when you go in there, but you have the opportunity to take them somewhere else.”
The Sonata del Sol program, operated in conjunction with Arizona State University’s Herberger College of the Arts, is but one of four innovative programs offered at Mayo facilities that bring the best of the arts, music and poetry to their patients, their families and the staff.
Both artists and doctors understand the healing power of creative expression. Art therapy is an established mental health profession that uses the creative process of art to enhance the physical, mental and emotional well-being of patients of all ages. Increasingly, more artists are finding their ways into hospitals, and even into the medical field as medical illustrators, for example.
The unique melding of medicine and art at the Mayo hospitals is the result of a vision of brothers Dr. William J. Mayo and Dr. Charles Mayo, sons of founder W.W. Mayo. It supported their credo that “The needs of the patient come first.”
“The Mayo brothers were very instrumental in bringing in arts and music, not only as a needed distraction for patients – many who are dealing with stressful medical issues, but to also aid in the healing process,” says Colette Pecenka, coordinator for the Humanities in Medicine program at Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale.
Art and music have been a part of the local Mayo hospital and clinic since its arrival in the Valley in 1987, but the Humanities in Medicine program was launched in 1997.
The three Mayo Clinic sites in Minnesota, Arizona and Florida all host Humanities in Medicine programs.
Patients, family members and staff enjoy the constantly changing artworks of Mayo’s 10 galleries in its hospitals and clinics.
Mayo’s Atrium Music Series is another program that has garnered praise. The one-hour music noontime concerts are held at the Mayo Hospital on Tuesdays and at the Mayo Clinic on Wednesdays.
The variety of presentations range from steel drums to fiddles, big band trios to blues guitarists, harps and violins to traditional Mexican folk by Mariachi Pasión.
Betty Duarte-Matwick, artistic director, singer and bass player with Mariachi Pasión, says the 13 women in the group find the experience rewarding.
“Two Christmas’ ago, there was a family from Chihuahua whose loved one was going to pass over, and they knew it. A gentleman from the family came over after we played and said thank you. He said it was the most pleasant thing to happen during the trip,” Duarte-Matwick says.
Special performers like Julie Crystal Peña on Paraguayan harp and Banda Tres Brazilian jazz add more spice to the noon hour line-up mix.
Mayo patients unable to leave their rooms – like Rialto – are also feted with music and poetry through two bedside programs offered through Humanities in Medicine.
The Sonata del Sol program offers solace in song. Like McDermitt, harpist Paula Provo has been a part of this program since its inception.
Another joint Mayo-ASU program is Poesía del Sol. Alberto “Tito” Rios, poet and regents professor at ASU, oversees the program.
Creative writing students interact bedside with patients, talking about their lives, their interests, their families. Then the writer creates a poem for the patient. The poem is printed on handmade paper, framed, then read and presented to the patient.
The Mayo Clinic Center’s Humanities in Medicine was a 2007 Governor’s Arts Award recipient, honoring the Poesía del Sol and Sonata del Sol programs.
For more information on the Mayo Humanities in Medicine programs, visit www.mayoclinic.org/humanities-in-medicine.
* Though a real person, Mercedes Rialto is not her real name. The name was changed due to patient privacy issues.
