Thoughts on art, philosophy and healthcare

I’m first an artist, philosopher, then a parent, then a nurse (an Emergency nurse) and a nurse practitioner. This is my health blog and it’s inspired by the news front, by the events in the world, the little people that I am raising and my life experiences.

The past three years, the only things I’ve written are papers for a class. They are exercises in critical thinking for healthcare but they are not really written for general sharing. Every other line on those papers require citations (those little links that indicates that “this is not my original thought, this is the thought of other experts, who are more knowledgeable than me on this subject”). If I’m painting, my papers are like collages, tidbits and pieces of knowledge that I’m presenting together in this new way so my professor knows, yep, I got it (as often they’re the only audience to my writing.) When I was an artist, at the end of the year, I have a body of work that I can show and have other people say, “wow that’s cool! thanks for sharing!”. It was something tangible. As a healthcare professional, the closest thing to tangible is a shiny certificate after years of studying, sweat and tears.

As important as scholarly writing is, it’s a very heavy, weighty type of writing that can easily bore people. Time and time again, popularity in our social media has proven that we all like original thought. And that is the problem today—so many “original” thinkers in healthcare that becomes the loudest voices over and above reason. In philosophy class, we were always trying to breakdown the patterns of thought, to present another side of the argument—the whole “I think therefore I am” and even then, you ask the question of whether or not you’re only a simulacrum. But in healthcare, we build on the knowledge of other experts before us. Even those who get a pHD in heath related topic do not really explore the subject the way philosophers like Decartes and Baudrillard do. So, I am taking a much needed break from scholarly writing, to recapture my artist and philosopher self again and maybe come up with some original thinking… but then again, maybe not as original as drinking bleach or taking a horse pill.

Thanks for reading this far…,