Colleen Durocher knows the University Hospital inside and out. Three visits in two years had her feeling like it was her second home. Even though she knew the doctors and nurses were doing all they could, she still didn’t feel comfortable.
“I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to get home as fast as I could,” says Durocher, executive secretary in the Office of the Assistant Vice President for Development. “I was trying to make my life seem normal when it wasn’t really normal.”
Durocher wanted to go home more than ever during her second stay, which was twice as long as the first, but a knock on the door led to a change in the way she felt about her hospital visit.
“I was surprised, and absolutely delighted, when the Art Cart came to my room,” Durocher says. “I chose a picture [of autumn leaves] that was meaningful and peaceful, so when I didn’t feel well I could look at the picture. It took my mind off of a difficult situation to be engrossed in choosing artwork for the room. It was so nice to have a picture on the walls of my hospital room that I had chosen during my stay.”
Through the U-M Health System’s (UMHS) Gifts of Art program, the Art Cart allows patients to choose artwork to be hung in their room while they are hospitalized.
With the help of Elaine Sims, director, and Kathi Talley, visual arts preparator for the Gifts of Art program, the Art Cart delivers framed pictures to some 800 beds in the University Hospital and C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital. Thirty-one volunteers wheel the cart through wing after wing of the hospitals two to three times a week.
“When patients come here, their whole world is reduced to their illness,” Sims says. “We have something that says to the patient that we really care about them and want to give them a choice. The art can have a profound impact on them. It helps people retain their identity and sense of self.”
Durocher agrees. “It transports you to another place so that you can think about better things.”
Recently, Linda Sutton, unit host on floor 8A of the U-M Hospital, received a request from a former patient for a picture from his hospital room. The picture had inspired him so much during his stay that he wanted to look at it in his home.
“Some patients are so excited that they get to pick [the art],” Sutton says. “It means a lot and affects their progress. It really gives patients a sense of control over their environment.”
Even though it is not a regular practice for the Gifts of Art program to give art away, Talley and Sims know the effect these pictures have on patients. Sutton was able to grant the request with the exact picture that had hung in the former patient’s room more than a year before.
Recent funding has allowed the Gifts of Art program to redo each cart and update images in order to offer patients more choices while keeping each piece of art in good condition during its stay on the cart. U-M Plant Operations built a beautiful new cart, Sims says, and rebuilt the old one to look like new.
The selection and purchasing of new art for the carts takes the Gifts of Art program much longer. The Mott art selections took about six months to complete, Talley says, and the University Hospital cart will take one to two years to fully expand its art selection.
The Art Cart is one of only a few such programs around the country, and the Gifts of Art program is trying to spread the word about the benefits for patients like Durocher.
“Gifts of Art brings a human quality back to the hospital. I know the doctors and nurses try to do this, but I think this extra program helps even more,” Durocher says. “I really appreciate the fact that somebody was there for me.”
