Perspectives

Title: Looking In. This is a series of 64 mixed media drawings consolidated into a single work. Over the course of my MSc research, I assessed over 1000 MR images in the validation of a rating scale to be used for the evaluation of age-related neurodegeneration. During this process, I found the work was very disengaging in contrast to my clinical work with elderly individuals. When viewing the MR images I was “looking in” the brains of real humans with rich histories and stories, but I felt so separated from them as human beings. This inspired the creation of this art piece. Taking 64 slices from an MR image of my own brain, I created a daily journal of my experiences and emotions, tracing and coloring in each subsequent slice to create artistic works representing my internal world. This served as a reminder that each MR image I looked at involved a real person and had real human impacts. This work has also been impactful as I begin my medical training, where empathy is vital, but where it is also so easy to forget the human impact of your work when you are looking at an MRI scan of a patient's brain, or an incision into a body hidden by surgical drapes. Hopefully this work will serve to strengthen the empathy that readers have for their patients and research subjects, and be a reminder of the real human impact of their work.