Girl before a mirror: painting by Pablo Picasso (1932) 
http://www.everypainterpaintshimself.com/article/picassos_girl_before_a_mirror
Background
Cubism is a style of art created by George Braque and Pablo Picasso (Gottlieb, 1966). Cubism is a style of art which uses shapes found in nature to draw a picture from different vantage points which transcend time and space. The above picture is titled “Girl before a mirror” painted by Pablo Picasso in 1932. There are various interpretations as to what Picasso intended with this painting. Half of the woman’s face is covered in make-up, which is a representation of the face she puts on during the day (Gottlieb, 1966). The other half of her face is when the makeup has been removed, making her appear and vulnerable. In the mirrors, her reflection appears to be an older more wrinkled woman (Gottlieb, 1966). The reflection is a representation of the plague of vanity and how it distorts one’s self-image and make an individual to see more flaws in their appearance then everyone else sees (Gottlieb, 1966). There are various other interpretations of this art piece but the above described is the most common. This style of art encourages a holistic multidimensional perspective of images(Gottlieb, 1966).
Reflection
In clinical practice, we often refer to patients by the disease or condition they have as a means of identification. This occurred in the various clinical blocks among students and clinicians on a daily basis. Initially, this was not a concern to me as it is convenient for communicating the essential information. This was until I was confronted with an experience which forced me to see past the disease and see a human being. In retrospect from this experience, I realized that the ‘convenient’ way was at the expense of the sympathy, dignity, and respect for the patient.
The proceed of identifying patients by their disease or condition occurs on multiple occasions such as when receiving a referral or giving feedback on a patient. In a general hospital, the patient’s condition is written in big bold letters with the patient’s name scribbled underneath almost as if it is the disease or condition is their identity. These means of identifying patients was seemingly innocuous until I received a referral for a patient with septic bed sores.
As I marched up to the stairs to the patient’s ward curious to see what this new experience would be like as it would be my first time seeing a patient with bed sores. it never occurred to me why the patient had bedsores until I entered the room to meet the patient and go through her file. The patient was paraplegic and had laid in bed all day because she stayed in a homeless shelter with no one to care for her.
I took one look at the patient and I was mortified by the condition she was in. She looked like she was fading away and she had large gaping holes on her back that dripped with pus and blood. At that moment that was all I saw and I could not even string together a sentence to ask how she was doing because all I saw was the ‘plague’ that was literally eating her body. That is until she began to speak to me.
She spoke with a hopeful sense of humor and told me about her life, or as we would call it “the international classification of function”. In an instant, I no longer saw bedsores or a paraplegic, but I saw a human being. Like the girl before a mirror, she had multiple facets. She did have an illness but that was not all there was to her and her illness is part of her identity but it was not who she was.
There were suddenly aspects in the interaction which were not there before. The fear that was previously there was replaced sympathy, dignity, and respect. The sympathy developed because I understood her outside the context of a hospital setting and sympathy develops when you are able to understand the patients suffering and not the disease of the patient (Svenaeus, 2014). A certain level of sympathy known as professional concern is required to provide optimal health to a patient (Svenaeus, 2014). Optimal treatment is in line with two of the core principles of health care which are beneficence and health maximization (Schröder-Bäck, Duncan, Sherlaw, Brall & Czabanowska, 2014).
Through this experience, I have come to realize that by referring to patients by their disease or condition we lose sight of their humanity. As a result, we become focused on treating the disease and not the human being suffering from the disease. When we are able to see the human being behind the disease and understand their suffering it will enable better quality therapist-patient interaction. This allowed me to embody more ethical principles when treating my patient and moving forward I will not only see the disease but all the aspects of the human being who is before me.
References
Abrahams, S. (2018). EPPH | Picasso’s Girl Before a Mirror (1932). Retrieved from http://www.everypainterpaintshimself.com/article/picassos_girl_before_a_mirror
Gottlieb, C. (1966). Picasso’s “Girl before a Mirror”. The Journal Of Aesthetics And Art Criticism, 24(4). doi: DOI: 10.2307/428775
Schröder-Bäck, P., Duncan, P., Sherlaw, W., Brall, C., & Czabanowska, K. (2014). Teaching seven principles for public health ethics: towards a curriculum for a short course on ethics in public health programmes. BMC Medical Ethics, 15(1). doi: 10.1186/1472-6939-15-73
Svenaeus, F. (2014). The relationship between empathy and sympathy in good health care. Medicine, Health Care, And Philosophy, 18(2), 267-277. doi: 10.1007/s11019-014-9601-x
2 thoughts on “Multidimensional perspective”
Hi Hlulani
First of all thank you for sharing this piece. I enjoyed reading it and in some manner I could relate to your experience, as clinicians from my past clinical practice placements have also referred to patients according to their conditions, which I did not like and I found it very offensive. We as physiotherapists and any health professional for that matter, should never loose the though that the people we are talking about, treating and seeing are also human being with morals, values and feelings just like us. It is important that we respect your patients and not partake in crimes against humanity such as referring to them in another other way except for their names/surnames. We as students are so susceptible to the influence from our clinicians and we easily fall into the same patterns/habits as them during clinical rotations, but I think it is important that we sometimes have to stand up to them in situations like these, as we are the voices for our patients.
Regarding your art piece and reflection -I did not quite understand the link between the two. I understood how you described the painting in the first paragraph, what it meant and the relation/meaning behind it regarding how people see themselves, but I did not understand how that linked to your reflection piece as that was focused more on how you saw the patient and not how she saw herself.
Perhaps you could relate/mention the painting in your reflection to link the two parts with each other making it more coherent. I think that would help the reader to understand the story more.
Another thing that I thought about while reading the piece was your link between the painting, your story and the ethics module. I understood that we should be ethical in the sense of not referring to patients according to their conditions (you could possibly make this more clear by writing about it), but the rest of the story was not very relatable to ethics, it seemed more inclined to be a reflection of clinical. Perhaps you could add a part to your reflection which specifically talks about ethics (or an aspect of ethics) to relate your writing to the module. You mentioned that you gained appreciation for the ICF, which is mainly a component of clinical practice – perhaps you could also add here how your appreciation for the ICF links to ethics specifically.
Aside from that I think your piece was good and I think if you make some of the above changes it can benefit your piece/writing even more.
References:
You did not use references in your piece and for this assignment references are very important. You can reference your painting as well as aspects or components of ethics that is relatable to your piece. You need to in-text reference as well as add a reference list at the end.
Spelling:
Second last sentence before the reflection: “then” – than
: “See’s” – sees
Last sentence before the reflection: Start the sentence with a capital letter “T”.
Paragraph (referring to reflection section), 4th sentence: “Int”- into
Paragraph 2, 7th sentence: after the word ‘death’, the word ‘she’ is repeated (twice)
Paragraph 3, sentence 3: “steering” – staring
Paragraph 3, sentence 3: repetition of the words “to ask”
Paragraph 4, sentence 2: “a” – I
Grammar:
Paragraph 1, sentence 1: “under a name” – under the name
Paragraph 1, sentence 4: ‘ , ‘ after sense
Paragraph 2, sentence 2: you wrote “I had I was given” – I had should not be there.
Paragraph 2, sentence 8: You are using a lot of “and” repetitively, perhaps use more commas or change the sentence structure to flow a bit more smoothly.
Paragraph 3, sentence 1: Who/what are you referring to with the word “them”?
Paragraph 3, last sentence: Leave out the word “but”.
Paragraph 4, last sentence: perhaps change “and” to “yet” as it seems that you are saying she has more conditions.
Overall I enjoyed the piece and I think you captured an important aspect of working with patients- that we should view them as normal people just as ourselves and not just objects/conditions that need treating. We should treat patients with respect just as we would like to be treated.
I think your piece (writing) just needs to be linked to ethics a bit more.
Well done!
Kind Regards
Janine
Hi Hlulani
Before i begin i would just like to thank you for this reflection. i enjoyed this piece a lot due to the fact that i have also dealt with a situation quite similar to this.
the comment for this piece are s follows:
1. You gave a very in depth explanation of the image you used and it various interpretation however i feel that you did not make enough of an connection between the image interpretation and the main topic that you are discussing
2. Go more depth in discussing your feeling during this event and how your feelings progressed throughout your assessment
3. You should try to make the topic that you are addressing more clear from the beginning
4. Make a clear link between your topic and the elements of ethics that we have learned. You discussed your topic well but there is no clear connection between ethics and your reflection
5. I would like to expand on how this event will affect your future experiences with patients like these
6. Try to find evidence to support your statement and include a reference list and in-text referencing
Spelling:
Second last sentence before the reflection: “then” – than
: “See’s” – sees
Last sentence before the reflection: Start the sentence with a capital letter “T”.
Paragraph (referring to reflection section), 4th sentence: “Int”- into
Paragraph 2, 7th sentence: after the word ‘death’, the word ‘she’ is repeated (twice)
Paragraph 3, sentence 3: “steering” – staring
Paragraph 3, sentence 3: repetition of the words “to ask”
Paragraph 4, sentence 2: “a” – I
Grammar:
Paragraph 1, sentence 1: “under a name” – under the name
Paragraph 1, sentence 4: ‘ , ‘ after sense
Paragraph 2, sentence 2: you wrote “I had I was given” – I had should not be there.
Paragraph 2, sentence 8: You are using a lot of “and” repetitively, perhaps use more commas or change the sentence structure to flow a bit more smoothly.
Paragraph 3, sentence 1: Who/what are you referring to with the word “them”?
Paragraph 3, last sentence: Leave out the word “but”.
Paragraph 4, last sentence: perhaps change “and” to “yet” as it seems that you are saying she has more conditions.
If you make the above mentioned adjustment there is no doubt in my mind that you will do well in this assignment
Kind regards
Dylan