Art therapy in medical settings: an oncologist's perspective

What led you to be interested in the potential of art therapy to support healthcare professionals?

It was very serendipitous. It all began when I got into a lift and I met Megan Tjasink, an art therapist at the hospital I was working at. She was carrying a whole load of art making materials. It was just quite interesting to see her there, so I was like, ‘Oh, what do you do?’

She told me that she was an art therapist, and we started to have a conversation which then turned into a professional relationship where we got to know each other and learn about what we both do.

I was a medical oncology registrar at the time, so a doctor in specialty training, knowing that this was the specialty that I want to go into. I’d been a doctor for about five years, and I was working in a very busy hospital. I was relatively junior but facing fraught and challenging situations. Doctors, and many health care professionals, are in such demanding and busy roles, we don’t often get the chance to stop and reflect on ourselves. This puts us as medical professionals at risk of becoming burnt out, but not realising we’re burnt out. It also means we might not recognise burnout in our colleagues – or know what to do when we do identify it.

When we met, Megan had already recognised that there was a level of burnout within health care professionals and had always wanted to find a way in to how she could create something to support us. I was keen because I have a slightly creative background – in the back of my mind, if I wasn’t going to be a doctor, I’d probably have been something a bit more creative, like a designer or an architect. Those conversations between us turned into Megan having the foresight to really look into burnout itself as a factor.

In 2015, we did a pilot study. We recruited a group of oncology and palliative care doctors, because those were the people that I was working most closely with at that time. We did a six-session course of art therapy, which was run by Megan.

The draw for many of us for these sessions was that we could do some art making. Not, ‘let’s sort our burnout’. In fact, there was some pre-intervention questionnaires, and I think a lot of us were surprised to find that we were close or already at that burnout stage. Following the sessions, the data showed that there was some improvement, particularly around emotional exhaustion. What a lot of us as participants thought would just be a fun exercise, was actually therapeutic.

What’s also important is that Megan created the sessions using the research that was out there and her expertise. It was very specific to the needs for us at the time. It was tailor-made art therapy, delivered by an art therapist who understood us and what we needed.

We then did a lot of work in trying to promote it within the hospital, and in every forum we discussed it in, people were putting their hands up saying ‘This is something that we’d love to do.’

Had it been clear that the sessions were going to be a therapeutic response to burnout, do you think the take-up would have been different?

Engagement is always difficult. I think trying to get people to join something like this or anything that’s outside of work could be difficult. Everyone is so busy, and the last thing they want to do after work is then go and sit down and do something still in the working environment.

I suspect it would have been harder to recruit people if we’d advertised it primarily as a burnout intervention. Especially back in 2015, I would have thought ‘Oh, no, I don’t need that. What is this?’ It was clever approach from Megan to invite people to come and do art making and then offer the six-week sessions if they found it helpful. There was likely a selection bias in our pilot cohort. Intially, you’re going to get people joining these initiatives who are invested and interested.

What are your thoughts on the use of manualised approaches in healthcare settings, and do you see advantages over more non-directive forms of practice?

I believe a framework is important. There were six sessions in the pilot, and each session followed a therapeutic element. This is an important aspect, especially when you look at the structure of the intervention provided in the clinical trial that Megan published. However, I think there will be such a varied mix of experience within the room, so you do need to have some flexibility to be able to reflect back.

In the pilot (Tjasink and Soosaipillai, 2019), the participants were mainly oncologist and palliative care physicians, so there were shared experiences as we were all looking after people who had cancer, those who were very unwell, and sometimes those who were coming to the end of their life. That’s very different to the perspective of someone who works in the emergency department, where patients are acutely unwell and there is continuous pressure, high demand, or maybe even someone who works in an outpatient-based specialty, such as rheumatology or dermatology, where the patients are unlikely to be unwell. I think a manual is helpful for the framework, but there will need to be flexibility to account for different groups and experiences.

Through your research and clinical experience, what have you learned about the emotional experiences that staff may be carrying – and how does art therapy help create space for that?

As an oncologist consultant now, I face quite a high emotional burden in terms of what I see everyday in my clinics; it’s very much an emotional roller coaster. I could give good news to one patient, and the next patient it could be bad news. It’s a lot to carry, but I have to just realign and go from one consultation to the next.

Art therapy is certainly a powerful tool, and I would love for other institutions to start having it available. There’s strong evidence now that shows it can help address burnout. However, like any intervention, it will not suit everyone.

What I like about art therapy is it offers a different route into reflection than traditional talking therapies. It can remove some fear and discomfort that some people might feel about therapy. In group art therapy, I found huge personal value in hearing that other people were going through was similar to what I was feeling, and then experiencing how that was then reflected in the artwork that we created.

In one session we made individual clay pieces which we later combined into a shared artwork. It suddenly looked like an underwater landscape. Looking and reflecting on it together, we realised how naturally our contributions had come together. This helped us recognise how many experiences we shared despite feeling isolated in them. That was really what was powerful about it: to be able to recognise shared experiences within others and learn from each other. It took away the fear of feeling alone or that you might be judged for voicing your vulnerabilities. Having the sessions be non-judgmental, confidential and with an art therapist there to guide the process so it felt safe was really important.

Burnout is frequently discussed as an individual issue, yet many of its causes are systemic. How do you see the role of interventions such as art therapy alongside the broader organisational and cultural changes that are needed within healthcare?

It’s no surprise that I think a lot of healthcare professionals feel pressured in their work environments. Often people are working longer hours than they’re scheduled for. It feels like a lot of the work we’re doing seems to be out of goodwill. There are also financial pressures from an institutional level, including staffing, retention, sickness. There are health and wellbeing initiatives within different institutions, which are very helpful. But again, I feel like they can be available, but might not suit everyone.

The pilot study we did was over 10 years ago, but it’s interesting to see, particularly within resident doctors, how the value of therapy has become embedded into some of what they do. Certainly, in a hospital where I work, the ward-based doctors get a regular 30-minute session with a psychologist to talk about their experiences. There seems to be quite good engagement with that. If reflective and therapeutic support is introduced during training, it becomes normalised and carries less stigma once people enter the profession.

As parts of art therapy become embedded into an organization, I think there does need to be an effort to give people a dedicated space for the sessions, especially if they are attending out of working hours. Having some buffering time to settle into the sessions would also be helpful. I remember getting to some of those pilot sessions after work and being in an absolute state. And it would take about 10-15 minutes to come out of that.

Art therapy is not asking for huge amounts of funds, and there’s a tangible benefit from it. But to sustain art therapy in health care environments, we need two things – a space to do it and the funds to run it.

Is it also about showing outcomes in factors like retention or sickness absence, and how the benefits offset the costs or offer a return on investment?

Those outcomes can be difficult to measure. That’s why the trial that has been published in BMJ Public Health is so powerful (Tjasink et al 2025). It shows you can affect burnout in a positive way by doing art therapy. It’s hard to argue against that.

How might the day-to-day experience of healthcare professionals change if creativity and emotional reflection were prioritised, and what role could art therapy play in that future?

My hope would be that organisations understand the impact of art therapy – that it is a positive thing and that it’s not hugely expensive. As an intervention it might not fit everyone, but it will fit a significant group of people.

Whenever I speak to doctors or other healthcare professionals, I have found it interesting the number of them who are really interested in just art making. We’re often quite creative people, but we’ve ended up in a science-based people-facing role. For a lot of people, when life gets busy, one of the first things to go is their hobbies, such as art making. Yet it’s often one of the things that can make a real difference when you’re feeling overwhelmed and overworked.

I think the culture within organisations is changing because people are changing. I have worked in roles where I’ve managed resident doctors, and I can certainly see that some of the concerns being brought to me now are very different from when I was a resident doctor myself. Back then, there were things you simply wouldn’t have raised because you’d never spoken about them with anyone before—you’d just try to deal with them yourself. Now, I’m really pleased that people come and talk to me.

I hope that in the future, there will be greater openness to interventions such as art therapy. I’m hoping that future leaders, who are the current resident doctors, will be able to find ways to secure funding and then embed something such as art therapy sessions.

It’s important to emphasise that this can’t just be done by anyone. Art therapy is not simply an ‘art-making activity’. It is a therapeutic intervention. The art making may be what draws people in, but the therapeutic process is what makes the difference. It needs to be facilitated by someone who is a properly trained and a registered art therapist and understands exactly what they’re doing. It also needs to follow what was done in the clinical trial.

If there are art therapists coming through who are interested in this area, I’d encourage them to find a friendly doctor or healthcare professional who is equally invested.

As I said, it was pure chance that I met Megan in a lift one day and we struck up a conversation. From that came a helpful intervention, important research and publications, and I’ve even created pieces that have been exhibited in a hospital and at Buckingham Palace! It’s amazing how these opportunities can grow from a single conversation. They lead to things you would never have imagined happening.