Art of Caring at White Memorial Hospital
Healing-centered care is essential to achieving health equity, a core value and area of impact for PHS. Health care providers often seek our support in exploring what constitutes culturally-relevant care in the communities they serve and designing responsive programs.
Together with our partners at Adventist Health White Memorial Hospital (AHWM) , Dr. King and PHS collaborators Megan Powers and Dr. Amelia Buttress applied human-centered design to the development and pilot of a medical education curriculum known as “The Art of Caring.”
The curriculum was designed collaboratively with members of the AHWM Obstetrics and Gynecology hospital staff and medical group. Through participatory methods, staff and community engaged in defining what exactly is “healing-centered care” and what educational tools could support it.
The resulting curriculum pilot included a learning community and training sessions designed to support the wellbeing of caregivers, healing-centered patient communication, and links to the surrounding Boyle Heights community.
PHS authored a case study exploring outcomes of the “The Art of Caring” pilot, including challenges and opportunities faced in addressing social aspects of care in medical education. We expect the findings to be published in Spring 2025 in a peer-review medical journal.
The “Art of Caring” culminated in a critical dialogue on community healing traditions for maternal and reproductive health, with guests including a birth and gender doula and representatives of California Alliance for Traditional Arts and The Children’s Partnership.
The Art of Caring curriculum was designed in collaboration with staff of Adventist Health White Memorial in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles.
In the inspiration and ideation phases of the human-centered design project, PHS facilitated a learning community where medical residents explored the “paradoxes of care” in Western medicine. Findings were later translated into curriculum components.
In the pilot phase, residents participated in a learning community with trainings on polyvagal theory, trauma stewardship, care for the caregiver (individual level); patient communication and trauma-informed care (interpersonal level); and Latino(a) health (community level).