Healthcare leaders constantly seek ways to enhance patient care, support staff, and improve organizational culture. While data-driven strategies and operational efficiencies are essential, true leadership requires something deeper—vision, character, and a sense of purpose. The business model offers useful transactional pointers, but the arts and humanities provide profound lessons in courage, resilience, and creative problem-solving. These qualities are crucial for navigating the complexities of healthcare today.
As Vincent van Gogh once said, “If you hear a voice within say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.” Similarly, leaders must embrace challenges with courage, drawing inspiration from disciplines that cultivate vision and human connection.
The Role of the Arts in Healthcare
The arts have long played a role in medicine—from ancient anatomical drawings to modern creative arts therapy music therapy and narrative medicine. Today, we see the power of the arts in patient care, staff development, and the healthcare environment itself:
- Healing through Art: Facilities managers select artwork that reduces anxiety, improves mood, and promotes healing.
- Creative Arts Therapy: Licensed Creative Arts Therapists (LCATs) use music, drama, writing, and visual arts to help patients and staff manage stress, process emotions, and enhance resilience.
- Narrative Medicine: Some medical schools incorporate storytelling and reflection into training, fostering deeper clinician-patient connections.
A recent New York Times article, “For the Sick and Dying, Live Music to Ease the Pain,” highlights the impact of live music in hospitals and hospice care, reinforcing what many of us already know: human connection is strengthened through the arts, and supports healing.
First-Hand Experience: Arts for Healthcare Leaders
Beyond patient care, the arts can shape how leaders engage, problem-solve, and communicate. At a major hospital, I developed The Friday Forum, a leadership program framed by Socratic dialogue and interdisciplinary collaboration. Sessions brought together physicians and nurses, creative arts therapists, administrators, and non-clinical staff, fostering new ways of learning, thinking and working together.
One standout session featured music therapy and was led by Music Therapists and Organization Staff development staff. Participants learned about Music Therapy and then engaged in an experience. Participants —many with no musical background—were given instruments (or simply encouraged to tap pens and hands). What began as dissonant noise transformed into coordinated rhythm, a metaphor for how healthcare teams can align, adapt, and create something meaningful together. A dialogue followed and explored feelings of stress, anxiety and ways to relieve the pressures of working in healthcare. The experience was eye-opening: music became a bridge for communication, mutual respect, and creativity in leadership.
The Arts and the Future of Healthcare Leadership
While the arts have, to some degree, been integrated into clinical training, patient care and wellness programs for healthcare staff, they remain underutilized in healthcare management education. Future leaders must be courageous change agents—reflective, creative, and capable of seeing beyond metrics and systems.
To develop innovative, human-centered leaders, we need to expand leadership training to more deeply include the arts and humanities. These disciplines cultivate:
- Empathy: Understanding different perspectives, patient and staff experiences and our own experiences too.
- Communication: Expressing ideas effectively and listening deeply as we learn and grow from with others and through our work
- Collaboration: Working across disciplines to solve complex problems, handling conflict and developing understanding and respect..
At Leslin Healthcare Leadership Foundation, we are committed to embedding these principles into leadership development. The future of healthcare demands leaders who can think critically, communicate with purpose, and inspire meaningful change.
What do you think? Could integrating the arts into healthcare leadership training enhance the way we develop future leaders? Let’s start the conversation.