Points of View - Arts Council

educes the length of inpatient stays or pain intensity. Life is to be lived, not survived. Using
the arts to challenge the stultifying, dehumanising, unwritten medical curriculum offers a
rich education vein to be mined.
The most likely scenario is that the arts will use both arguments to ply their trade
within the medical community. It is only right that questions as to whether the arts promote
healing in its more holistic conception are explored. However, it would probably be wise
that they equally, if not more strongly, stress the non-evidence based reasons for having art
in hospital; the transformation of an intimidatory, cold and clinical environment into one
where patients can engage with their surroundings on a human and empathic level.
If I may make one last observation which deviates from my main text. As one who works in
a deprived community yet inhabits one of the middle class islands in the North Inner City, it
has often seemed to me that the arts pander to those moneyed classes. Poverty is the biggest
predictor of poor health. If art does want to make a difference in health settings it should
focus on those settings in areas of deprivation. Let art not be yet another affirmer of Tudor
Hart’s infamous Inverse Care Law i.e. ‘the need for healthcare is inversely proportional to
the provision of healthcare’.
—
Dr Austin O’Carroll has worked as a GP in an inner-city practice since 1997. The Mountjoy Street Family Practice
specialises in providing primary care to excluded groups including homeless people, non-nationals and drug users.
Dr O’Carroll founded Safetynet a networking organisation for health professionals providing primary care services
to homeless people. He has won an award from the African Refugee Network for his work with non-nationals and
published research in the area of health inequalities. He is presently doing a doctorate on the barriers to accessing
healthcare faced by homeless people. He is a trained relationship counsellor. He teaches GP trainees and specialises
in communication skills and personal development. He has used the arts extensively in his teaching. Dr O’Carroll has
also being involved in the disability movement and worked with arts and disability organisations. He has a large art
collection housed at the Mountjoy Street Family Practice.
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