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Can becoming an artist make you a better doctor, or simply help you become more of a person again?
On this episode of Surgeon, Interrupted, Frances Mei Hardin, MD, sits down with dermatologist and artist Rachel Lee, MD, whose oil paintings are now being exhibited for the first time.
Rachel did not grow up thinking of herself as an artist. Creativity entered her life near the end of residency, after years spent almost entirely inside science and medicine. What began as a creative outlet eventually became an important way to process the grief, stress, and accumulated experiences of medical training while discovering who she was outside of being a physician.
Together, Rachel and Frances Mei talk about why medicine teaches physicians to think of their careers as their entire identities, and why pursuing something outside of medicine can initially feel almost transgressive. They discuss the strange difficulty physicians have calling themselves writers, artists, entrepreneurs, or anything else without first earning another degree or credential.
Rachel also shares exactly how she started. No art degree. No childhood spent painting. She signed up for a weekend workshop, then enrolled in a class literally called “Drawing for the Absolute Beginner.” From there, she kept taking classes, eventually found oil painting, and years later exhibited and sold her work.
They discuss why trying something new as an adult can require real courage, how investing money can create useful accountability, and why physicians already possess many of the skills necessary to become beginners again.
Rachel also shares the story behind one of her paintings, Sad but on Vacation, which began as a painting inspired by tulips in Amsterdam and eventually became an exploration of sadness, dissociation, and the strange reality that beautiful things can be happening around us while something inside still does not feel right.
In this episode:
• Why physicians need identities outside medicine
• Art as a way to process medical training
• Becoming creative later in life
• Why doctors struggle to call themselves artists or writers
• Starting with “Drawing for the Absolute Beginner”
• Learning to tolerate being bad at something new
• Why creative work can be deeply healing
• The difference between medical education and art education
• How financial investment can create accountability
• Why oil painting taught Rachel patience
• Letting go of linear timelines
• Creating Sad but on Vacation
• Why life is often more interesting when you take the exit
Rachel leaves us with advice she now gives aspiring medical students: life is much more about the exits than the highway. The exits are where we take the scenic route, try something unexpected, and discover parts of ourselves we never would have found by staying on the prescribed path.
Host: Frances Mei Hardin, MD
Guest: Rachel Lee, MD
Presented by: The Hippocratic Collective
Follow Frances Mei on Instagram & Tiktok @francesmeimd
And subscribe to @HippocraticCollective on Youtube for all of the other shows the Hippocratic Collective has to offer.
