Practicing Art & Medicine

(light music) - This is Lab Medicine Rounds, a curated podcast for physicians, laboratory professionals and students. I'm your host, Justin Kreuter, the Bow Tie Bandit of Blood, a transfusion medicine pathologist and assistant professor of laboratory medicine and pathology at Mayo Clinic.

Today we're rounding with Dr. Laura Tafe, who works as a surgical and molecular pathologist, and is an associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire, my alma mater. We're gonna be talking about the practice of art and medicine today. And I think relevant to that also is another plug is that Dr. Tafe is also the current president of the Association of Molecular Pathology, so AMP.

So a nice testament that being active in the arts does not hinder other career pursuits. So thanks for joining us today, Dr. Tafe. - Thank you, Justin. It's a pleasure to get a chance to be on here with you and to see you. It's been a long time since we've had a chance to kind of talk and catch up. - So yeah, Dr. Tafe was my chief resident when I was starting off in my pathology career, honestly, back when I would wear regular neck ties. - Before you were converted to the bow tie.

- Yes, yes, exactly.

So why don't we kick off for this episode with kind of what is your artist origin story? - Oh, sure. I think it really goes back to when I was a child. I think we are really all born as creative people and it really kind of depends on how we're nourished from there. So I grew up in a family of teachers and my father was a music teacher, and until he switched careers kind of midlife, and my mom was an English teacher and she was also a writer and loved music.

And so I also have an aunt who's always been very active in art. So I think that was kind of always the environment I grew up with. And I kind of had parallel development of my interest in art and science and medicine, all really kind of throughout my early life. And I think probably around undergrad is when they probably started to verge a little bit and I felt like I needed to focus on one or the other. And I clearly went down the science pathway in medicine and yeah, so I became a physician.

I didn't do too much art for a long time. I would occasionally take a weekend class or dabble in it here and there, but I kind of put that part of myself aside for a while. And through training I also had two children, so I had a young family and as you know, medical training takes a lot of our time and our focus and energy. So that part of myself and my life kind of got put aside for a while.

And then it's kind of had a revival in the more recent years, the last three or so years I've been doing analog collage which is cutting up paper and gluing it together. And so that's been a real pleasure and some of what brought me to coming back to my art, my mom passed away in 2014 really unexpectedly. And that kind of sent me into a spiral of grief and depression for a while.

And around 2019, I was just a little bit needing to do something more with my time and my life, and my children were getting a little bit older and that's when I decided to come back to the art. So since then it's been a high priority of mine and really kind of integrated more into my day-to-day life. - What does that look like, that relationship of your art practice and medical practice?

You know, like many of us kind of appreciate healthcare is quite demanding, especially just to keep up with what's going on, let alone be a leader like you in AMP, but also you mentioned that you really prioritize your art practice. So what does that relationship look like? - I think it's an evolving one because it's becoming different things as I continue to do it.

So at first my art was very, very personal to me and was really kind of an extension of myself totally separate from my job, totally separate from medicine. And then slowly as I've started to share my art, they're kind of starting to interdigitate a little bit, which is pretty interesting. I do prioritize it in that I am conscious about setting aside time for myself on a weekly basis to go and do something. And collage is very nice because it can be as short or as long as you would like.

So I can spend 15 minutes in the evening just cutting things up or I can spend a few hours. And I also carry my supplies with me literally everywhere I go. So I always have paper and glue and scissors, so even if I'm traveling for work, I can take a few minutes in the evening and cut up some paper and stuff like that, that makes me happy and kind of helps me unwind.

So we can talk a little bit more as we go about how it's kind of how the two have kind of started to merge together and some of my thoughts on that as well. - Oh yeah, yeah, please elaborate about that.

I'd be really kind of curious to see, and I think it's a wonderful testament, right, this I appreciate your honesty about this is in a state of evolution and trying to understand, I guess I kind of go back to when I was first learning how to drive a manual transmission and working that clutch and accelerator pedal. I bet it's something like that. - Yeah, certainly. There's times when you have more energy to devote to it and other times where you have to kind of lay off a little bit.

That's certainly true. And as I've started to share my art more, some other opportunities and connections have started to come about, I share online like on Twitter, and also in my local community and I've had some people reach out with me for some projects. And one recent thing is we there's a book coming out called "Artists Remaking Medicine" that I was asked to do some collages for and write a little piece about. And there's other medical professionals who are also artists in that as well.

And so that is something that's kind of come about for that. And I'm also connecting at my own institution with our medical school has a literary journal called "Lifelines." Many medical schools actually have things like this that I think most of us don't even recognize exist. And there's also a arts program and humanities program

in my hospital that I work at. So I'm starting to connect with those kind of people and sources to think about how what I do as an artist can be more possibly integrated with some of these other projects that are going on. And yes, it's developing. - Yeah, I hear a lot, lately it's people talking about there's a shift from, it's not this or that, but how is it and right, how are we working these two things together?

And so I guess to ask the question that probably many of the listers have bubbled around their mind is the time challenge, right? Like, you know, that's often as faculty whenever we're talking about doing something new and certainly an art pursuit might be something new or it's something on top. How do you navigate that challenge of not having enough time? - That's a very important question because I think we all kind have to figure out our ways to do that best.

One I think for me it's been really kind of making it a priority. So I don't think of my art as a hobby, I think of it as like a part of something that's part of my everyday life. So it's something I just do rather than have an option of doing. It's just something I wanna be doing. So it has a higher priority, which definitely has mean that things have had to shift. So I have honestly shifted some of my focus

in terms of saying no to a few more things at work that are not as interesting to me or do not feel as meaningful, and passing those off to other people, for instance. So it has been a little bit of a juggling to try to figure out how it is, what the pathway forward is going to look like, but it's an important thing and I'm getting a lot of nourishment inside work and outside of work from it and exploring it.

So it's something I'm continuing to be curious about how it will develop and evolve and kind of follow that through. But priority has helped, my children bing older has helped, so they don't need me quite as much, I can disappear for a little bit in the evening sometimes and take some time for myself to do that too. - That resonates with me. I've been in the same boat with the children and navigating the teenage years now. - Right. It's a different challenge, but- - Exactly.

So what advice do you have then for our listeners, we have a diverse listening group, some clinicians, some laboratory medicine professionals, students we also have listening to this podcast, I know you have a lot of interest in education, new residents out there. What advice do you have for those who have interests in addition to medicine? - Well, I hope we all have those interests in addition to medicine. We just might not necessarily talk about them.

And I think our work as meaningful and as important as it might feel, in healthcare it really is just a job. And sometimes it's helpful to have that perspective that that's not everything that we are and everything that we do. And that also allows us to make some space for other things in our lives, I think. And so, you know, I recommend people thinking about that, their lives as kind of a bigger picture. I just am not a healthcare worker, I am a person, I'm whatever, I like to do other things.

And that you can explore those other options. I do have the opportunity to teach early on in our med students first year and they're just about six weeks into their med school. It's like in September. And I do take the time after one of my lectures to show them some of my collages and remind them about maintaining these parts of ourselves that help give us balance, the connections to our families, asking for help, supporting each other. And the creativity can be anything that feels good to you.

It doesn't have to be art, it could be writing, it could be music, it can be riding your bicycle, it can be gardening, cooking. You know, there's so many different ways to kind of think about what this could be. But I think creativity is incredibly helpful for us as healthcare workers. I think it brings curiosity, it brings flexibility of thought and so much more into our work.

- You know, as I'm listening to you, two things to highlight out for our listeners, right, is I hear this theme of like new opportunities, right? It's not just like you're a collage artist and you're a physician, but you're contributing, you were saying about this collection coming out about kind of that blending of the two. And so it's kind of a nice example

how it didn't really start out with an intention for kind of that cross. But just by putting yourself out there, by sharing your content, you've found others and found new opportunities, which is really, I think quite stimulating.

And then I hear a kindness as well in that, right, you're talking about saying no to other opportunities and I just wanna highlight for our listeners, for somebody like you in these leadership roles, probably I'm guessing saying no to some opportunities means that you're giving more junior faculty some opportunities- - Hopefully yes. - Which can help their careers as well. - Yeah, definitely.

It's an opportunity to do some of that mentoring as well that it's so important to us as professionals and also in our career and to support others who are coming behind us in their careers, yeah. - Now I always, I usually kind of close my questions with where do you think this is going? And I totally appreciate the fact that this is an evolving aspect of your life. But what are your thoughts on where does your art practice go in the coming months to years?

- I think it's going to probably continue to evolve along this track of a lot of it being for myself and for my own self-expression, and just that internal need that I have to create. And then kind of following my curiosity through what are these other threads that are starting to show up like you mentioned the other connections, other opportunities that are starting to kind of catch my attention and also connect to me.

And I would say in other areas of medicine, there is a little bit more talk about art and humanities. I think like narrative medicine, for instance, is becoming more discussed and more developed and more taught for other subspecialties in medicine. And you know, in pathology, we don't have a lot of discussion about that so far. There are a few other pathologists who are very creative and are starting, and are sharing their art and their work.

But I think as a field of pathology, I'm thinking about how can we bring more of this into our field too, either for our residents, ourselves, and for that interaction with patients that many of us enjoy having and what opportunities lay there. And I wanna say too that my experience of sharing my art was not necessarily an easy one to start with. One of the reasons why I started to share

was that I had a few people that were very supportive of me early on. And that kind of gave me the courage to start to be vulnerable and put myself out there and then it gets more comfortable. And one of the reasons I share is to show people that it's okay to put these other aspects of yourself out there and that people will be welcoming of it and actually get excited to see that you are more than just a physician or a pathologist.

And that's been really important to kind of be an example of how to do that because a couple of people were able to provide that initial kind of support for me. And then hopefully I can pass that on. And also, I never had someone earlier in my career to kind of be an example of that, that you could also be a writer, an artist, so on and so forth. And that should, that should also be an important part of what we talk about in our lives as healthcare workers. - Yeah, that's brilliant.

That really resonates with me too. That's how I think about my Instagram profile is I kind of think of right now Twitter and I guess maybe coming on Threads now is a little bit more that straight healthcare professional. But a lot of times for people that are interested in kind of the full person, Dr. Kreuter is my Instagram account where I'm showing what I'm doing as a father, as an artist, as a physician. - That's great. - I know you wanna flip the script on me. - I do, I do.

I do wanna ask you a question that you kinda just led into is that, I've noticed that you've posted some about graphic medicine and I'm very curious to hear a little bit more about that from you and also what your own interests in art are 'cause it sounds like you have some that I'm not necessarily aware of. - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So the graphic medicine started out back several years. I don't know if that was like 2015-16, somewhere in there.

I went to one of those TEDx conferences and they were kind of talking about kind of like the 30-day challenge of like doing something for 30 days. And I was there with another medical educator that I work with in transfusion and we were kind of thinking about comics and wouldn't it be fun to do like comics because some of those basic principles of transfusion medicine.

Now certainly, you know, this is my life's work, so to say that I can cover it, comic strip is a little bit of an existential crisis, but there's certainly like bite-sized chunks that fit well, right? - Yeah, yeah. - And so we started doing that. We called it Transfusion Tunes on Twitter. We would post and it came at a time when I had already started using social media to like talk about transfusion medicine, clinically important issues.

But then I noticed when we put out like these Transfusion Tunes, like there was a lot more pickup, right? So almost like I would talk about something, without a sketch or a comic and like, that would only resonate with the fellow converted, right? - The die hard? - Exactly.

But, you know, I threw out a Transfusion Tune, and all of a sudden, like my colleagues and friends in critical care medicine and emergency medicine, like other people would pick up the topic, would share it, would comment about it, sparked more conversation. It was like, it was one of these things where I felt like I'd really stumbled into like, oh, so this is how I can kind of have that conversation, how I can bridge the gap.

And so that's where I've kind of have seen graphic medicine really play for me. But it's a really diverse feel that we'll put it in the show notes, but there's a website of graphicmedicine.org

and they do an annual conference and it's got attendees or healthcare professionals. There's artists, there's also patients that go because there's different facets. There's people like me that are talking about how do we work amongst each other as healthcare professionals to understand interprofessional collaboration. There are some people that are interested in how do we communicate with patients better, right?

So one of the folks have kind of worked to create kind of a script and diagram for talking with families about end of life issues. There's also work with people looking at like, hey, if we read the graphic novel about a patient who has Parkinson's disease, does that help impact medical students empathy for patients with this disease? As well as is this something that can be given to patients who are newly diagnosed? So it's a diverse field that might appeal to a number of our listeners.

- Yeah, no, it's fantastic and it's really exciting. I've seen a little bit of how that can work too. I am part of a woman's physician artist group as well that kind of came about sharing my art. But one of the artists in that is a surgeon who works with the children and has written some children's books about different surgical procedures that children might have.

And they're illustrated comic-like books and they provide a lot of explanation about what's gonna happen and has really been, she thinks has really alleviated a lot of that anticipation about what's gonna happen with surgery. So it's a great tool to communicate with patients and part of consent and education as well. I think that that's awesome. That's great. It'll be fun to see where it goes. And I'm thinking about where can it work in anatomic pathology a little bit better.

'Cause we're such a visual field of pathology that there's so much there that could happen. So maybe one of your listeners will take that on. - We've been routing with Dr. Tafe talking about practicing art and medicine. - Thank you for having me. It's been a delight. - And thank you, listeners, for taking the time to join us. Today we invite you to share your thoughts and suggestions via email to mcleducation@mayo.edu.

If you've enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and until our next rounds together, we encourage you to continue to connect lab medicine and the clinical practice through educational conversations. (light music)