Symposium 2024

Flourishing Spaces symposium 2024

We have people from all different backgrounds attending which will enrich our thinking, including students, artists, researchers, clinicians (junior, mid, late career and beyond), academics, therapists and more. Most of the day will be interactive and creative. We will hear from Freya, a medical student who will be sculpting through the day, Keefe, a medical student who is a pianist also, Ivon, a medical student who is a musician, but actually talking about his intercalated iBSc on uncertainty and creative enquiry. There are also many attending leading so much intersecting work across the field of flourishing and the arts including Olumide Popoola and Drs Jane Myat, Jeyapragash Jeyapala, Rupal Shah and Stephen Hibbs.

Flourishing symposium

For the main flourishing spaces website: https://www.creativeenquiry.co.uk/

Presentations

Silence.mp3

Silence, by Keefe Theeng

A reflection on lived experience as medical student

Breathless in a polluted world by Dr Cian Patel

As the cars roar loudly near my abode,

The thousands of them, on the motorway road,

I cough, splutter, panic, I scream out a wheeze,

I thought, “not again”, and suddenly, I could not breathe,

My mother ran towards me, screaming for assistance,

Next thing I know, I am fighting for my existence,

It lasted for minutes, but it felt like forever,

Why me, why can’t it be never,

But I knew it was where we lived, near the poisonous air,

We could not afford to move, it is simply unfair,

I wonder why we focus more, on the plastic straw,

Rather than the companies, who seem to be above the law,

The world leaders, as they slumber in their palaces,

Whilst my family works all day, for pennies, and calluses,

All those promises they make, they seem so empty,

Words with no meaning, they say so plenty,

I am enraged and exhausted, anxious and upset,

When those in power are flying again, with their private jet,

I worry for myself, I worry for my generation,

They deserve to know, all of our condemnation,

The floods, the hurricanes, the droughts, and cyclones,

They take so much away from us, leaving us with bones,

We call them natural disasters, but what is so natural about them,

Like the smog that surrounds me, as I battle my stubborn phlegm,

I could have been bones, but I am still here today,

It was that time again to go to the doctors, I had a lot to say,

I went to the GP, with tears in my eyes,

They must have saw my notes, they looked at me without surprise,

They let me rant and cry, they let me wail and shout,

I was aggrieved with the world, I had to let it all out,

I asked the doctor, will it happen once more,

As they were sorting my prescription, asking my closest store,

They tried to reassure me, but they could not guarantee,

Even they had no power, over our warmer land and sea,

Over the skies infested with dirty, dangerous gas,

We both want a cleaner world, but alas,

What will it take, for those in power to take action,

How many of us must perish, for their reaction,

No appointment or medication, can fully prevent another attack,

It is up to the richest, to put us on the right track,

We cannot do it all, our recycling bins have no meaning,

Unless corporations do the same, we need to convince them, for their intervening.

Cian AUDIO-2024-10-02-11-18-25.m4a

Ivon Kandiah - Symp.pptx

Uncertainty and Creative Enquiry iBSc - Ivon Kandiah

Medical student

Freya Qureshi - Sculpter, Medical student

When I was invited to sculpt at this symposium, my mind was rife with ideas and plans to fall back on, for fear I would not be able to sculpt something spontaneously. I had arrived to the event with a pre-made skeleton of what I planned to sculpt and began work on my design. After half an hour of this, I was drawn into a conversation with a GP who had emigrated from South Africa. She explained to me the belief in her home country that a child born with extra fingers was a sign of luck. This led to a conversation on how some communities value things differently to others. This motif mirrored a lot of what was being discussed that day, around flourishing and the medical field. Components of flourishing, such as vulnerability and creativity, are valued greatly in a human and spiritual context, but are characteristics that are often ostracised by medicine.

Flourishing is the sixth finger of medicine. It is a wonderful privilege that is often not allowed to be fostered. With continued collaboration and exposure I hope we together will be able to let this sixth finger fully form.

The cards by Dr Jane Myat

Dr Rupal Shah - 'Bad News' from 'Fighting for the Soul of General Practice - the algorithm will see you now' (authors: Rupal Shah and Jens Foell)

I had been trying to contact Joan for the past week. A chest X-ray taken during a recent hospital admission for pneumonia revealed possible lung cancer but she self-discharged before she was told the diagnosis. She didn’t have a landline and wasn’t answering her mobile phone. I was walking past her tower block on my way home from the surgery, so I decided to try and tell her the news in person.

I first met Joan about fifteen years ago, soon after I started at the practice. She grew up in a poor area of Glasgow as one of seven children. She had invisible wounds from her childhood, which revealed themselves as I got to know her. It might be why she had fallen out with all her siblings over the years, except for one older brother who lived nearby in London. She told me that he had always looked out for her when no one else did. She was quick to notice any real or perceived slight. Enough people had let her down in her life to make her frugal with her trust and quick to withdraw it.

Because she wasn’t housebound, I had never seen her at home before. She lived on the seventh floor of a tall grey council block. The paint was peeling from around the front entrance and when I got buzzed in, a heady mix of cannabis laced with urine hit me in the face.

There were different lifts for odd-numbered floors and for even. But in any case, on that day neither lift was working and so I took the stairs, feeling a cold draft on my face as I climbed up.

Joan opened the door cautiously, with the chain done up and was clearly astonished to see me.

‘Oh my God, it’s bad news isn’t it?’ she said as she let me in.

I sat with her in the front room recovering my breath. We were still for a few moments, and neither of us said anything. I took in her front room, the worn sofa, covered in a colourful-knitted blanket and magazines, the single armchair, and the television which she switched off when I sat down. I could see her more clearly than ever before. We looked at one another and it seemed brutal to break the silence and end that moment. ‘Joan, I don’t know, but I’m afraid it might be – I’m so sorry’. I told her about the xray. I was expecting an outpouring of shock, but actually she was surprisingly calm.

‘You know, I’m not surprised. I thought it would be that, I knew all along really, it’s why I couldn’t stay in that hospital any longer. Well, I’m just glad it was you who told me’.

There was a moment when both of us had our guards down. We could acknowledge that life can deal you these curve balls. I couldn’t help her to dodge it, all I could do was stand next to her when it came spinning towards her. ‘Well I’m just glad it was you who told me’. Those words kept echoing in my head for a long time afterwards, bringing tears to my eyes unexpectedly. The privilege of being allowed to stand next to her, being part of each other’s stories, those moments of connection that dissolve me, that’s why I want to keep working as a GP.

There have been many moments like this in my 20 years of being a GP and they are what nourish me and keep me in practice. I am more grateful for them than I can express.

Culture is not fixed, it is created by the multiple small interactions we have with our patients and colleagues. What would happen if we were to change the language we use with each other, so that it is about values and relationships, not about output and targets; and if we were to acknowledge and validate the feelings generated in clinicians by patient encounters? If instead of suppressing emotions as though they were something to be ashamed of, we let ourselves feel? Without this, it is hard to see the meaning in what we do. By finding meaning in our work, we will locate hope.

Transformation of clinical spaces - Dr Stephen Hibbs

Belonging, Dignity, Justice in PGR Educator Development by Olumide Popoola

BDJ1 and Flourishing for GTADevs.pptx

Junior Doctor perspective - Dr Jeyapragash Jeyapala

Jey Flourishing Symposium .pptx

Megan Tjasink

Creation, resistance, and hope. Art therapy for clinicians at risk of burnout.

Megan Tjasink, Lead Art Psychotherapist in Cancer and Palliative Care at Barts Health NHS Trust and doctoral clinical research fellow at QMUL will share her journey from establishing a grass roots art therapy programme for and in collaboration with trainee doctors on rotation at Barts hospital to running a multicentre RCT testing art therapy for reduction of burnout and mental distress in healthcare professionals in acute hospitals. She will present some findings from the trial, the first of its kind, including participants’ experiences of personal change, improved relationships, experimental art making and creative discovery.