The Arts and Medicine

What is the place of the arts in medicine? You can’t close a wound with words, or prescribe a poem in place of antibiotics. And yet for me, a pediatric emergency physician in New York City, the two crafts have always been intimately related. The arts describe what it’s like to be alive. They help us connect with and understand our patients, ourselves, and the world in which we practice. So it’s natural to turn to the arts as a method of healing during the Covid-19 pandemic.