Health – Centre for Health, Humanities and Science

On November 29th, 2023, the EPIC project and the Bristol Centre for Health Humanities and Science (CHHS) convened a multidisciplinary, collaborative workshop involving health practitioners, academic researchers, and students to explore lived experiences of trauma. More specifically, the workshop delved into trauma as experienced by clinicians, their patients, and marginalised or vulnerable societal groups, including children, women, and people from socioeconomically disadvantaged populations. To explore these experiences, we were joined by five speakers with expertise in trauma-related research.

In a timely talk exploring childhood trauma, Dr. Maya Mukamel explained how the ambiguous legal and political status of children in some countries renders them susceptible to human rights violations and various moral and epistemic harms. This was followed by an exploration of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, where Dr. Elizabeth Gourd highlighted the trauma that can occur during and in the aftermath of war. This fuelled discussion about post-World War II Britain, characterised by enduring scars and a ‘wilful determination for closure.’

Other talks explored how trauma is encountered in healthcare and medical education. In a talk titled ‘The Healing Paradox,’ Prof. Louise Younie explored the role of ‘creative inquiry’ using artistic practices to equip clinicians with conceptual tools for navigating emotional complexities. She also cautioned against resilience-focused medical discourses, which might inadvertently lead to perfectionism as well as feelings of shame and inadequacy. Alternatively, Prof. Younie proposed an approach centred around ‘flourishing’ and finding creative pathways to integrate trauma-informed care into mainstream medical education.

Echoing these ideas, Dr. Jonathon Tomlinson also stressed the significance of embracing holistic patient perspectives, with greater consideration for intersectionality, lived experience and personal histories. Building on this, he explained that trauma typically escapes diagnosis, manifesting in various chronic and acute illnesses, posing challenges for patients.

Concluding the sessions, Kate Binnie, a music therapist, PhD student, and palliative care practitioner, described the relationship between lived experiences involving breathlessness, trauma, and epistemic injustice. In particular, Kate explained how a body-mind approach, employing song and breathwork practices, can help alleviate potentially traumatic experiences of breathlessness for individuals approaching the end of life.

Collectively, these discussions underscored the interconnectedness of trauma and epistemic injustice, particularly how interactions with clinicians can either alleviate or exacerbate trauma. The speakers unanimously emphasised the need for shared concepts and practices to address trauma experiences, benefiting both healthcare practitioners and their patients.

(Blog by Kathryn Body, CHHS PGR Representative)

This blog post recalls and reviews one of the summer’s main events supported by CHHS. On 26 June 2023, a collaboration between Great Western Hospitals and Medicine 360, ‘Bodies’ bought together healthcare professionals, medical students, academics and members of the public to explore interdisciplinary approaches to health and healthcare. A combination of talks, panel discussions, poetry readings, animations, and artworks provided opportunities to reflect on the relationship we as human beings have with our own bodies, other people’s bodies and the role of healthcare within this.

The Bad Doctor
Dr. Ian Williams author of The Bad Doctor and The Lady Doctor introduced ‘Graphic Medicine’ an online platform using art, humour and wit to portray different scenarios encountered in healthcare and in his own life as a medical doctor. As a concept, Williams defines graphic medicine as ‘the intersection between the medium of comics and the discourse of healthcare’ providing a careful, yet powerful medium for communicating some of the issues facing clinicians, patients and the NHS. Williams’s work uses comics to educate, empathise and normalise aspects of our lived experience as either patients or healthcare professionals, helping navigate complex topics such as mental health and perceived failure.

The power of storytelling, narrative and visual art was also bought to the fore by Bristol City Poet, Kat Lyons, whose spoken word performance and award-winning animation Duvet Days tells of her struggles with paranoid anxiety following premature menopause. Kat’s work also provides avenues for exploring topics such as mental health, age, and identity, overcoming communication barriers and highlighting the importance of sharing lived experience.

Grief, Death and Donation
The second half of the day opened with a panel discussion on grief by Prof. Lesel Dawson, Prof. Lucy Selman and Prof. Mark Taubert chaired by Dr. Rachel Clarke. This discussion was inspired, in part by the ‘Good Grief Festival’ a community founded by Prof. Lucy Selman aimed at providing people experiencing grief with ‘solace and support through storytelling’. Amongst other things, one of the topics raised was “grief hierarchies” specifically, the idea that some grief experiences are more socially acceptable than others. For example, the grief that often follows miscarriage or still birth was a topic that one of the panellists, drawing on her own lived experience, felt is sometimes associated with a diminished sense of significance, social stigma and taboo. These themes were further amplified by artworks by Clare Clark, Bristol-based conceptual artist whose delicate works were displayed in the Great Hall. Claire’s work aims at breaking down barriers in public discourse surrounding miscarriage and creating awareness of the unresolved pain it can involve.

The significance of normalising discussions about grief, death and dying was also bought to the fore in another talk, ‘The Making of My Dead Body’. The discussion led by anatomist and PhD student, Dayna Stone alongside anatomy administrator Laura Arnold, who told the heartfelt story behind ‘My Dead Body’ a Channel 4 production about Toni Crews, a young woman who donated her body for medical research and public dissection. The talk disclosed a deep sense of connection and gratitude towards Toni, her donation, and its educational significance for medical students, scientific researchers, and members of the public.

Wearable artworks
In another talk, artist and founder of ‘The Alternative Limb Project’ Sophie De Oliveira Barata gave an inspiring talk about her journey from sculptor to designer of wearable art pieces. Sophie works closely with prosthetists and a vast range of clients, including paralympic athletes, musicians, models, performing artists and veterans, to create limbs that enable people to express their individuality and feel empowered. In her talk, Sophie told the story of a young girl who she continuously worked with post-injury to design an age-appropriate limb reflecting her personality and creativity.

Overall, these talks in addition to many others provided new insight into a range of topics surrounding the body and our lived experience of it. A reoccurring theme in each seemed to be a push for acceptance of the body and of ourselves as fundamentally fallible, vulnerable beings. Considering this shared ambition, what many of the talks, performances, and exhibitions demonstrate is the crucial role the arts and humanities can play in helping people to develop new perspectives and navigate complex situations.

(Blog by Kathryn Body, CHHS PGR Representative)

Tag: Health

‘Trauma’: A multidisciplinary workshop

Reflecting on ‘BODIES’: an interdisciplinary conference exploring health and healthcare