We Got Your Back: Patient Advocacy Through Art.

I often paint pictures of patients facing away from the viewer with their johnny gowns open in the back. Nurses who watch me paint at conferences chuckle at this well-known reality of patient life; physicians often ask why I painted it that way. “Isn’t that disempowering? Why do you paint patients like that?” They ask me this with a furrowed brow and quizzical frown. I glance up from my current canvas and respond with a wry smile, “We are all patients in the end.