Creative Enquiry

Creative enquiry

Exploring lived experience through the arts. This may involve poetry, drama, photography, painting or any art form coupled with reflection. Creative enquiry allows for imaginative engagement with one’s own experience as well as trying out someone else’s shoes.

Flow

The precious silence that descends over a group exploring thoughts and experiences through creative expression… words, paints, clay, material, feathers…

Csikszentmihalyi, M. 1990. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper and Row.

Lived experience

Engaging with not just the patients stories, experiences and meaning making but also the stories and experiences of the health professionals as they seek to care for people at the sharp end of suffering.

Vulnerable leadership

Facilitation of transformative creative enquiry learning spaces requires both strength and vulnerability, sharing and silence, engagement and the creation of space for others to engage. Honesty, openess and vulnerability in the facilitator (clinician) sets the tone for group dialogue and sharing.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5330330/

Artist of the invisible

Creating, holding and protecting transformational spaces for others and ourselves is an art. The facilitator is an artist of the invisible realm of transformational space (Seeley, 2011).

Seeley, C. 2011. "Uncharted territory: Imagining a stronger relationship between the arts and action research." Action Research 9 (1):83-99.

Negative capability

Described by Keats as ‘capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts…’ (Keats 1817)

Keats, J. 1817. "John Keats' Negative Capability." BBC, accessed 9/9/10. https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/john-keats-and-negative-capability.

Transformative learning

Transformative learning involves the reflective transformation of beliefs, attitudes, opinions, and emotional reactions arising from our meaning schemes (Imel, 1998). Creative enquiry has the potential to enhance transformative learning through invitation of mulitple perspectives and viewing points, engagement with other languages of expression, metaphor and symbolism, as well as allowing affective and cognitive processing.

Imel, S. 1998. "Transformative learning in adulthood." accessed 7/5/10. http://www.ericdigests.org/1999-2/adulthood.htm.

Participatory engagement

Participatory engagement can relate to the educator, listening and improvising within the constraints and possibilities of their work environment as to where the introduction of creative enquiry may be fruitful. Participatory engagement can also relate to learners listening and improvising within their creative enquiry experience and be likened to the parallel process of the clinician practitioner listening to their patients and responding to what is emerging.

'The technician’s solution lies outside of the situation and can usually be found in a book or journal, whereas the practitioner’s solution lies in the situation itself' (Rolfe, 2003)

Rolfe G. Practice Development is Practitioner Development. 6th Annual Practice Development ConferenceEarth Centre; Doncaster 2003.

Practitioner development

Whilst acquiring the knowledge needed to diagnose and treat disease might be an intellectual pursuit, development of an interpersonal and practice-based understanding is a more personal, embodied and applied endeavour. Learning within this realm may take the form of engagement with intersubjectivity, narrative humility, reflexivity, developing one’s voice and use of space and silence. ‘Practitioner development’ draws on Schon’s writing about the reflective practitioner being in dialogue with the situation (Schön 1987, p13) and Fish’s ‘practitioner researcher’, professionals who recognise the need for themselves as practitioners to understand their own practice and consider it critically (Fish 1998).

Fish, D. 1998. Appreciating Practice in the Caring Professions; Refocusing Professional Development & Practitioner Research. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.

Schön, D.A. 1987. Educating the reflective practitioner: toward a new design for teaching and learning in the professions. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass

1. Carel H, Macnaughton J. "How do you feel?": oscillating perspectives in the clinic. Lancet. 2012;379(9834):2334-5.

2. Kumagai AK. Perspective: Acts of Interpretation: A Philosophical Approach to Using Creative Arts in Medical Education. Academic Medicine. 2012;87(8):1138-44.

3. Charon R. Narrative Medicine: Form, Function, and Ethics. Annals of Internal Medicine. 2001;134(1):83-7.

4. Charon R. Narrative Medicine, Honouring the Stories of Illness. New York: Oxford University Press; 2006.

5. Shapiro J, Coulehan J, Wear D, Montello M. Medical Humanities and Their Discontents: Definitions, Critiques, and Implications. Academic Medicine. 2009;84(2):192-8.

6. Shapiro J. The Inner World of Medical Students, Listening to Their Voices in Poetry. New York: Radcliffe Publishing; 2009.

7. Coulehan JL. Tenderness and steadiness: Emotions in medical practice. Literature and Medicine. 1995;14:222-36.

8. Kuper A. The intersubjective and the intrasubjective in the patient–physician dyad: implications for medical humanities education. Medical Humanities. 2007;33(2):75-80.

9. Kuper A. Literature and Medicine: A Problem of Assessment. Academic Medicine. 2006;81(10):S128-S37.

10. Haidet P. Jazz and the 'Art' of Medicine: Improvisation in the Medical Encounter. Annals of Family Medicine. 2007;5(2):164-9.

11. Haidet P, Jarecke J, Adams NE, Stuckey HL, Green MJ, Shapiro D, et al. A guiding framework to maximise the power of the arts in medical education: a systematic review and metasynthesis. Med Educ. 2016;50(3):320-31.

12. Best JA. The Things We Have Lost. JAMA. 2016;316(18):1871-2.

13. Barry CA, Stevenson FA, Britten N, Barber N, Bradley CP. Giving voice to the lifeworld. More humane, more effective medical care? A qualitative study of doctor-patient communication in general practice. Social Science & Medicine. 2001;53(4):487-505.

14. Broyard A. Intoxicated by my illness. New York: Ballantine Books; 1992.

15. Bub B. Communication skills that heal: a practical approach to a new professionalism in medicine. Oxford: Radcliffe Publishing; 2006.

16. Cribb A, Bignold S. Towards the reflexive medical school: The hidden curriculum and medical education research. Studies in Higher Education. 1999;24:195-209.

17. Dyrbye LN, Thomas MR, Shanafelt TD. Medical Student Distress: Causes, Consequences, and Proposed Solutions. Mayo Clinic Proceedings. 2005;80(12):1613-22.

18. Eisner E. Art and Knowledge. In: Knowles GJ, Cole AL, editors. Handbook of the ARTS in Qualitative Research. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage; 2008.

19. Epstein R. Mindful practice. JAMA. 1999;282:833-9.

20. Engel G. From biomedical to biopsychosocial. Being scientific in the human domain. Psychosomatics. 1997;38(6):521-8.

21. Levenstein JH, McCracken EC, McWhinney IR, Stewart MA, Brown JB. The Patient-Centred Clinical Method. 1. A Model of the Doctor-Patient Interaction in Family Medicine. Family Practice. 1986;3:24-30.

22. Calman KC, Downie RS, Duthie M, Sweeney B. Literature and medicine: a short course for medical students. Medical Education. 1988;22(4):265-9.

23. Park B, Steckler N, Ey S, Wiser A, DeVoe J. Co-creating a thriving human-centered health system in the post-covid-19 era. NEJM Catalyst innovations in care delivery. 2020:2.

24. Scannell K. Writing for our lives: physician narratives and medical practice. Ann Intern Med. 2002;137(9):779-81.

25. Palmer PJ. The Courage to Teach; Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass; 2007.

26. Nissen-Lie HA, Rønnestad MH, Høglend PA, Havik OE, Solbakken OA, Stiles TC, et al. Love Yourself as a Person, Doubt Yourself as a Therapist? Clin Psychol Psychother. 2015.

27. Nachmanovitch S. Free Play; Improvisation in Life and Art. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc.; 1990.

28. McNiff S. Arts-based research. In: Knowles JG, Cole AL, editors. Handbook of the arts in qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage; 2008. p. 29-40.

29. Frank AW. The wounded storyteller: body, illness, and ethics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press; 1995.

30. Thompson T, Lamont-Robinson C, Younie L. ‘Compulsory creativity’: rationales, recipes, and results in the placement of mandatory creative endeavour in a medical undergraduate curriculum. Medical Education Online [Internet]. 2010 09 Dec. 2010. Available from: http://www.med-ed-online.net/index.php/meo/article/view/5394.

31. Younie MLA. Art in Medical Education: Practice and Dialogue. In: V. Bates, Bleakley A, Goodman S, editors. Medicine, Health and the Arts; Approaches to the Medical Humanities. Abingdon,New York,: Routledge; 2013.

32. Younie L. Introducing arts-based inquiry into medical education: ‘Exploring the Creative Arts in Health and Illness’. In: McIntosh P, Warren D, editors. Creativity in the Classroom: Case Studies in Using the Arts in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. Bristol: Intellect Publishers; 2013.

33. Younie L. Arts-based inquiry and a clinician educator's journey of discovery. In: C.L.McLean, editor. Creative Arts in Humane Medicine. Edmonton: Brush Education Inc.; 2014.

34. Younie L. Vulnerable leadership. London J Prim Care (Abingdon). 2016;8(3):37-8.

35. Younie L. Beginner's mind. London Journal of Primary Care. 2017;9(6):83-5.

36. Younie L, Swinglehurst D. Creative enquiry and reflective general practice. Br J Gen Pract. 2019;69(686):446-7.

37. Younie L. Vulnerability, Resilience and the Arts. In: Patterson J, Kinchington F, editors. Body Talk: whose language? . Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars; 2019. p. 64-77.

38. Younie L, Swinglehurst D. Creative enquiry and the clinical encounter. Br J Gen Pract. 2020;70(690):26-7.

39. Younie L. When I say flourishing in medical education... Journal of Holistic Healthcare [Internet]. 2020; 17(3):[44-6 pp.].

40. Younie L. Flourishing through creative enquiry: humanising the medical experience. Journal of Holistic Healthcare [Internet]. 2021; 18(1):[3-5 pp.].

41. Younie L. What does creative enquiry have to contribute to flourishing in medical education? In: Murray E, Brown J, editors. The mental health and wellbeing of healthcare practitioners: research and practice: Wiley-Blackwell; In press.