Thesis
Art in the waiting room: community care and narrative healing in oncology spaces
Master of Arts (M.A.), Drexel University
Jun 2025
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17918/etd-6505
Abstract
This culminating project explores the use of art therapy to facilitate community care for patients and their caregivers in an outpatient radiation oncology setting. Through reviewing contemporary literature that examines social ties and support systems during cancer treatment, medical art therapy in cancer care, anxiety in healthcare waiting "third spaces," and community care, this project seeks to understand the current applications of these concepts in the oncology space and how art therapy interventions can be expanded beyond ancillary services to advance patients' treatment goals. I aim to explore these ideas through a community-based art therapy intervention, a community loom in the lobby, as well as to present findings and lessons learned from this intervention. As a means of creatively exploring and persuasively conveying the impact of community art therapy in oncology, I engage the use of ethnographic practices in the form of fiction as research. I examine contemporary research in the fields of arts-based research (ABR), ethnography and social fiction as research practice to understand how these methods can best be used to communicate findings and effect change. In this case, the desired change is the implementation of a permanent art therapy program in an outpatient radiation oncology treatment facility. Through this work I aim to generate empathy in readers and to promote understanding, engagement, and investment in the value of community-based art therapy approaches in oncology.
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Details
- Title
- Art in the waiting room
- Creators
- Grace Hills Childers
- Contributors
- Denise R. Wolf (Advisor) - Drexel University, Creative Arts Therapies
- Awarding Institution
- Drexel University
- Degree Awarded
- Master of Arts (M.A.)
- Publisher
- Drexel University; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Number of pages
- iii, 43 pages
- Resource Type
- Thesis
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Creative Arts Therapies; College of Nursing and Health Professions; Drexel University
- Other Identifier
- 991014632432304721