Featured Artist

Kristy is the founder of Art As Adjuvant, a project which was inspired following a dramatic death of a patient, her first, in the Emergency Department. Early in her 3rd year, she realized the power of writing to reflect on her often intense experiences as a clerk. The act of sharing these reflections with friends helped form a community of medical students who subsequently started a website in 2013 to allow this exchange to occur more globally.

In the intervening years of medical school and now the beginning of residency in Family Practise, she continues to learn and share with colleagues through art. By spending time writing, she is compelled to examine the layers behind each encounter, which provides the opportunity to learn about her patients as people, beyond their diagnoses. It has become both a grounding mechanism as well as a tool to incorporate the humanities into her practise, even when there may be little time to reflect when on a busy schedule.

It is Kristy’s hope that medical arts will continue to flourish, just as we are seeing more and more new programs across North America integrating arts and medicine. She sees this movement as a way to generate more understanding, curious and compassionate clinicians.