Art, Simulation and Surgical Humanities

This proposal responds to the Science in Culture Highlight Notice, framing operative surgery as a domain where science and technology intersect both with individuals and with society. Although surgery is widely perceived as a scientific field, making sense of this intersection is not the province of science alone. This proposal argues that arts and humanities can provide crucial viewpoints that are usually absent within the discourses of surgery, offering a rich interplay of perspectives to illuminate societal challenges and tensions around the balance between patient-centred caring and the demands of technology and science.

The proposal brings together experts from arts, humanities and surgery to explore the operating theatre as a complex site for cultural research. By developing the theme of 'surgical humanities', the project will explore the potential of art as a means of capturing multiple dimensions of clinical experience. Because access to actual surgery is severely limited, immersive simulation will provide a safe setting which offers the promise of a new expressive medium for such exploration, building on pioneering work by the PI. Low-cost yet highly realistic surgical environments (for instance using an inflatable operating theatre equipped with authentic instruments and recorded sounds) can recreate many complexities of actual surgery. This work is already giving rise to widespread interest as an educational and public engagement approach.

By standing as proxy for actual clinical events, simulation can recreate something that closely reflects reality (while providing protection against harm), allowing non-clinicians to 'experience' and start to understand what happens during operations. In a wider sense, however, it may also offer a new expressive medium in its own right, allowing artists to manipulate and experiment in ways which would be unthinkable in the real environment. By interpreting the clinical setting through the eyes and ears of visual artists, musicians and design engineers (working closely with clinicians and patients), we believe that new understandings will be generated.

Our aim is therefore to use expertise in simulation, education, performance art, jazz, multimodal semiotics and engineering design as a framework for illuminating the sociocultural practices of surgery, in the process allowing participants to deepen their understanding of their own domains by reconfiguring their professional practice through new insights. So far as we are aware, the potential of immersive surgical simulation for artistic expression has not been systematically explored.

This project will allow a group of innovative artists, musicians, social scientists and surgeons to explore the creative potential around surgical simulation as an artistic medium. A multidisciplinary collaborative network will generate innovative and unorthodox approaches which, in addition to their own artistic value and interest, may offer important insights into the complex relationships between surgery and our wider society.

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This research will benefit various confirmed and potential user groups. The drawing together of active researchers from different disciplines presents an appropriate context for extending the influence of this period of funded research beyond traditional domain limitations.

Medical Humanities Research Communities

Within medicine the critical feedback, reflexive debate and introduction of new perceptions and methodologies from the fields of visual art, music, design and semiotics, will mandate a re-evaluation of the ethical and social impact of surgical simulation research. While this will explicitly affect the iterative exploration of the field undertaken by the Principal Investigator, the dissemination of the findings to the medical humanities community is likely to have an influential effect on the understanding of the intellectual challenges and advantages of external scrutiny of medical procedures, training and environments. This project is intended to support a non-hierarchical peer-to-peer dialogue between science-based and arts and humanities based researchers. The project seeks to evaluate the potential for interdisciplinary critique to form an integral part of research into the efficacy of surgical training and procedures. As a pilot case-study for this method of enquiry, medical humanities research and teaching professionals are expected to reference the questions and conclusions raised through this exploratory period of activity. The findings and contentions arising from this initial research will be collated to develop a journal abstract and conference paper.

Arts and Humanities Research and Practitioner Communities

The investigation of the potential for surgical simulation environments to be accessed and critically engaged with by researchers and practitioners from visual art, music, design and other fields offers real benefit to members of research communities who might traditionally have found that their engagement with surgical environments restricted or instrumentalised. The opening of simulated contexts for surgical research to extra-disciplinary manipulation, critique and influence without compromising actual patient or practitioner experience offers an unusual insight into the potential for shared concerns to be articulated within the territories of non-verbal communication, social dynamics and behavioural analysis. The co-investigator, invited consultant participants and other guests will have the opportunity to challenge pre-conceptions of clinical environments and to incorporate reflections on this territory within their home disciplines. The diverse professional experience of the named participants offers real advantages in engaging wider communities with the enquiry and conclusions of this period of research, through their established audiences within visual art galleries, performance venues and museums.

Patients and Practitioners

This award continues the exploration of the benefits of a multi-disciplinary approach to enhancing the healing environment, actively supported by the Kings Fund and within NHS Trusts since 1993. This proposed period of investigation focusses on the intellectual insights gained in the understanding of external perception of the restricted environment of the operating theatre, the reflections and questions raised during this period of dialogue are intended to encourage an enhanced critical framework to explore empathetical and environmental challenges to an empowered understanding of surgery by those directly involved, whether as practitioners or patients. Medical Humanities research is increasingly incorporated within the formal training of medical practitioners. Knowledge gained within this interdisciplinary research in intended to further enhance understanding of the potential benefits of a engaging a broader reference community in the assessment of the st