Sanjana Sundara Raj Sreenath is a medical student in the United States. She is particularly interested in digital art, medical humanities, as well as narrative medicine. This piece highlights the multifaceted impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and our relentless fight against it. Her studio art “Red, White and Blue” appears in the Spring 2021 Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine.
Practicing in an increasingly complex healthcare system while simultaneously delivering high quality care in a limited amount of time is a challenge for many healthcare professionals.
Sarah Se-Jung Oh’s painting “Hard as Nails” captures two different facets of practicing medicine: as a healthcare provider and a healer. The painting features an outstretched hand in a bleak OR setting and conjures up themes of trauma, injury and a certain degree of dehumanization. However, the painting also highlights the importance of healing, regrowth and regeneration as well as the therapeutic role an intervening healthcare team could play in trauma settings. While the mechanized hand underscores themes of surgical precision, efficiency and scientific advancement that healthcare professionals might often relentlessly pursue, the hand is also a cry for help and healing. It is a call for providers to also serve in the role of a healer.
Suffering due to trauma or illness often brings with it feelings of disconnect from the world as we knew it when we were healthy. The healthcare provider-healer, therefore, has an important opportunity to intervene in this unique setting and respond to the patient’s cry for help by offering a personal, humanistic touch and guiding them through trauma in addition to clinical management. They provide an avenue for the patient to develop healing narratives and re-contextualize their pain and suffering. Every patient encounter is rife with potential for reflection, healing and coping. Providers as healers can serve as conduits to reconnecting with the world after trauma/illness.
Balancing these two roles can be extremely challenging at times and is perfectly captured by Oh’s painting.
©Hard as Nails. Sarah Se-Jung Oh. Spring 2019 Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine
Sanjana Sundara Raj Sreenath is a medical student in the United States. She is particularly interested in digital art, medical humanities, as well as narrative medicine. This piece highlights the multifaceted impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and our relentless fight against it. Her studio art “Red, White and Blue” appears in the Spring 2021 Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine.