During a release event in the medical school’s atrium, several students read their written words and explained the meanings behind their visual art. First-year medical student Aryan Sarparast, one of The Script’s editors and an AIM officer, explained that the arts group had received more than 120 submissions from students, faculty, staff and community physicians who serve the College of Medicine as volunteer faculty and preceptors. The selected artistic pieces centered on four themes – death, time, reflection and humanity.
“I don’t know what is more powerful than solidarity” in how physician educators and physicians-in-training express themselves in relation to patient care, he said. “It’s easy to let medical school and being a doctor define you. But you can be an artist. You can also be a doctor.”
First-year student Angela DelPrete’s essay, “On Perspective” described the view outside her window at her new home in Medical City. She faces Nemours Children’s Hospital. The view makes her wonder about the future, she wrote, about the children being treated and their parents: “I wonder if they look across the highway at my insomnolent window, bright in the night, and know that behind it lies someone who plans on dedicating their life to be their newest hero. I wish I could tell them.”
College of Medicine faculty member Dr. Juan Cendan, AIM’s advisor and himself a musician, applauded the group’s inaugural edition. “The range of work is extremely personal,” he said, “It’s autobiographical.” He told students to “thank your parents for all the art classes they sent you to and all the after-school driving they did,” and urged them to pay their artistic talents forward by visiting museums, performing with local arts organizations and supporting community art efforts.
The Script is available for free on the medical school campus. WUCF, Orlando’s PBS affiliate, will be featuring a story soon on the Arts in Medicine program and filmed the magazine unveiling for part of its upcoming report.