HERSHEY, Pa. — When the going gets tough, the tough — and all of us — need the arts!
So says Claire de Boer, the founding director of Center Stage Arts in Health, which provides arts programming to nourish well-being throughout the Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and Penn State College of Medicine community.
“The arts fill a gap like none other can to uplift, cheer and relax in a non-therapeutic setting,” said de Boer, who is also director of the Doctors Kienle Center for Humanistic Medicine in the Department of Humanities, which develops programs and research that cultivate empathy and compassion in health care. “The arts can positively address emotions and our well-being, which is important because emotional health and physical health are tied together holistically.”
Especially during the COVID-19 upheaval — which finds patients restricted from visitors and each other, and staff coping and adapting on a daily basis — emotions are accelerated, de Boer said.
“People are feeling vulnerable, sensitive and stressed. They’re dealing with emotions that need a little TLC,” she said. “The arts are a way of saying ‘I acknowledge your thoughts and emotions,’ ‘I love you,’ ‘Here’s something beautiful I made for you.’”
To help everyone cope a little better, Center Stage, along with the Doctors Kienle Center and the Department of Humanities at the College of Medicine, initiated a cache of creative support that includes musical greetings, phone calls, staff support sessions, inspirational driveway art signs, art kits and more.
“We really value human, in-person connection, but that’s very limited now,” de Boer said. For example, the 40 different musicians who perform in different lobbies of the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center are silenced right now.
Without delay, Center Stage musicians adapted and, in a combined effort with College of Medicine students, created Musical Greetings, a variety of virtual performances to bring joy to hospital patients.
Monica Chincharick, of Ramey, Pa., was all smiles as she sang along with “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” as it played on an iPad in her room at Penn State Cancer Institute.
“It’s so beautiful, I could cry,” Chincharick said. “The only thing that would have made it better would be if I had photos of my family on my table while I watched them.”