U izradi
For the last hundred years, the modern medicine has achieved enviable results regarding the increase in life expectancy although the approach to the problem has prevalently been a mechanistic one. This in turn is increasingly raising the question of quality of life and maintaining health conditions after the medical interventions. There has been a spontaneous need for humanizing medical care and implementing art into the system as a means of attaining its wholeness.
The Centre for Art and Medicine is going to systematically introduce all forms of art into the premises of our hospital over the next five- year period; it is to be done through the cooperation with the experts who developed and introduced the program at Cleveland University Hospital (which is one of leading medical institutions in the world). Within the program framework, exhibitions and plays have been staged and concerts given as well as lectures related to art. The influence of the premises on the persons confined in them demands that the Centre acts and thus performs planning related to the activities and premises of our university hospital.
From the medical point of view, it has been observed that art therapy results in enhancing mood, a decreased consumption of painkillers and anxiolytics and, finally, in shortened periods of patients’ stay in hospital thanks to better coping with medical interventions. The inclusion of families in the programs facilitates the perception of treatment processes on the part of all partakers and provides for a better reintegration in life outside the university hospital.
The Centre for Art and Medicine has been an independently functioning hospital unit since the April of 2016.
Professor Fabijan Knežević founded Panacea Gallery in 2011 and exhibitions have been staged there ever since. There have been several one-man exhibitions staged by the following authors: Osman Berberović, Goran Vranić and Vesna Sokolić; there was a group exhibition as well featuring authors taking part in CEPAMET project implemented by School of Medicine, University of Zagreb, namely Aleksandar Forenbacher, Ivo Pervan, Ivana Vulić, Iva Višošević, Martina Gulan, Đuro Seder, Toni Franović, Damir Fabijanić, Makiko Akitsu, Monika Meglić and Marija Koruga. Each exhibition remains staged for two months providing for approximately 20000 visitors to see it.
In cooperation with the Academy of Music, namely with its Musicology Department, concerts have periodically been given at the University Hospital for Tumors since 2016.
The Open Library was founded in 2015 in line with the incentive supported by Ms Alis Marić, the president of association Europa Donna Croatia Vesna Ramljak and the employees of the Centre for Art and Medicine. The patients can borrow items temporary or permanently whereas the book shelves have been replenished under the close supervision of Ms Anica Vrdoljak who is the manager of the Library of the University Hospital for Tumors. Reading groups are offered as well and they have been moderated by Ms Barbara Bračun.