On this episode of the Academic Medicine Podcast, artists Rachel Mindrup, MFA, and Tuyet-Minh Tran, MD, discuss their artwork that has been featured on the cover of Academic Medicine. They explore the inspiration and creative process behind their pieces and how medicine has influenced their art and how art has influenced how they experience medicine. They also reflect on the role of the arts and humanities in medicine and medical education and how art can foster reflection and perspective taking in physicians.
This episode is now available through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and anywhere else podcasts are available.
A transcript is below.
Check out the artwork discussed in this episode and read the artists’ accompanying essays:
- Mindrup R. Ill-Fitting. Acad Med. 2023;98:957.
- Mindrup R. The Wristband. Acad Med. 2025;100:679.
- Tran T. An Ode to Anatomical Donors. Acad Med. 2025;100:557.
Transcript
Toni Gallo:
Welcome to the Academic Medicine Podcast. I’m Toni Gallo. Since 2008, each issue of Academic Medicine has featured original artwork on the cover and an accompanying essay exploring the origins and the inspirations for the piece. Artists whose work has been featured include medical students and residents, educators, clinicians, patients, and caregivers. On today’s episode, I’m joined by two artists whose work has appeared on the cover of Academic Medicine. Rachel Mindrup’s oil painting “Ill-Fitting” is featured on the August 2023 cover and her aquatint etching “The Wristband” is featured on the June 2025 cover and Dr. Tuyet-Minh Tran’s paper quilling piece “An Ode to Anatomical Donors” is featured on the May 2025 cover. In our conversation today, we’ll talk about Rachel’s and Tuyet-Min’s artwork and their experience blending art and medicine. We’ll also talk more broadly about the role of the arts and humanities in medicine and medical education. So to start our conversation, I’m going to ask each of you to introduce yourself for our listeners and also to tell us a little bit more about the artwork that you’ve published in Academic Medicine. So describe it for us. What medium did you use? How did you create it, and what was the inspiration? Rachel, you want to start?
Rachel Mindrup:
Sure. My name’s Rachel Mindrip. I’m an associate professor and the Dr. Deming Endowed Chair in Medical Humanities at Creighton University. I was lucky enough to be able to have two of my pieces on the covers, as Toni mentioned. Just to give a little background to each of them, both of the pieces have to do with my son and his kind of journey living with neurofibromatosis, which is an incurable and progressive genetic disorder. It causes tumors to grow anywhere in or on the body. It’s very unpredictable. There’s no cure right now. Of course, there are plenty of groups and people trying to help kind of change that, of course. But as far as the two pieces, it’s kind of interesting because they’re very sequential. The piece that was shown first was an oil painting called, it’s called “Ill-Fitting,” mostly because the painting depicted my son in the dressing gown that I tried to help put him in.
I quite rather unsuccessfully tried to put him in because in the painting you’ll notice that it doesn’t fit him. And I obviously didn’t know what I was doing with the medical gown. And sometimes those gowns, they have so many straps and cords and things, and you’re not sometimes quite sure how to actually put them on, or do they open in the front or in the back. And this one was pretty threadbare. And so when I got done with it, he was turned around. So I had him, I’m looking at his back and he said, well, he goes, is it on right, mom? Is this right? And it looked terrible. So I was like, and this was before he went in for his meeting with the neurosurgeon for brain surgery. But when I said, well, it is what it is, I don’t know what I’m doing.
But in that moment, the light was coming down from the examination room, and it was sort of illuminating him in such a way that I actually thought it was, I thought it was quite beautiful. And so I actually wanted to capture that moment in oil and as an oil painting. So it really is just that picture of my son asking me if everything is okay. It wasn’t. But anyway, so I tried to, like I said, capture that moment and with the light. And then, like I said, I kind of did that before his brain surgery. But then the other aquatint etching that I did that’s on this month’s issue is that wristband. And I know so many people, obviously everyone who’s in medicine knows to take off all the jewelry, just take all of that stuff off. And so trying to be the thoughtful mother that I am, I try to do all this stuff, and I actually forgot of all things. I actually forgot his wristband that actually says End NF on it. And only after his brain surgery when he came out and he had all these other tubes and cords and all this stuff that you obviously have to put on, it’s like, I saw that wristband and I was like I can’t believe I forgot the wristband. So anyway, that’s kind of the story of at least both of those. So one kind of event that led into two different kind of depictions.
Toni Gallo:
Why did you choose the mediums that you did for these two pieces?
Rachel Mindrup:
Well, first off, I should have mentioned too that, I mean, I love oil painting and I love printmaking. So that’s always the decision, am I going to draw and am I going to paint? Am I going to do printmaking? What lends itself to these? So with Henry’s situation before going in, like I said, just the way the light was coming down on him and just my view of, like I said, how I really horribly tied that gown, which I think, and anyone now looking at that painting’s going to be like, yeah, she did a pretty bad job there. But that one to me just sort of lent itself with the light and with the colors. And even the colors on that gown itself kind of lent color. I thought those muted greens and blues and stuff would make for a nice oil painting. Printmaking and etching in particular is a laborious and talio process.
It’s very method based, so you’ve got to do this before, you can do that before. And so you’ve got to keep dipping this plate in acid and then stopping out where you don’t want things to etch anymore and all of this stuff. So you kind of keep doing all of this and all these layers. So when I saw Henry’s wristband like that and all the layers of cords and all the intricacies and all the sort of, I don’t want to say the minutiae of it all, it’s like that looks like something that would also be captured in a process that is just as technically process oriented … layers … You have to get … aquatints and etchings you kind of have to get all that right or you’ll accidentally over etch or you’ll kind of mess it up. And I have years of experience messing up etchings and aquatint. So with that, I thought too that if I do mess this up, there’s a little wiggle room of spontaneity that could have acid wherever, because what isn’t such a, well, I shouldn’t say this, but I don’t say unperfect kind of thing. Things happen. Stuff happens that you didn’t expect. I’m just a caregiver, but I am sure Tuyet can explain some of the things that she’s seen. For sure. That’s why I thought the etching and the aquatint was kind of a perfect medium for that experience.
Toni Gallo:
Tuyet-Minh, you want to tell us about your paper quilling piece, which I think probably also requires lots of very careful steps in creating it.
Tuyet-Minh Tran:
Yeah. Well, my name is Tuyet-Minh. I just graduated from the School of Medicine at the University of Virginia, and I’ll be starting my residency in ophthalmology this summer. The piece that I submitted is called “An Ode to Anatomical Donors,” and it’s made with paper quilling. This is an art form that uses really thin strips of paper, maybe a millimeter thick and maybe like three to four millimeters high depending on the paper you’re using. So long strip of paper that you roll into a coil, almost kind of like a roll of toilet paper, and then you can pinch that coil into different shapes and glue it down onto base, a base to create a bigger image. And so I made this piece mainly because it was a required assignment. We were asked to reflect on our experiences in anatomy lab and paper quilling has just kind of been my thing for the past few years, but it felt really fitting for this assignment because anatomy is a process of dissection. We’re taking the whole body apart, and I feel like sometimes in that process, you lose who the person is as a whole. And so I thought it’d be symbolic in a way to use paper quilling to take all these tiny strips of papers that almost mimic the fibers of the muscle and to now put the body back together that I’d taken apart in anatomy.
Rachel Mindrup:
So what kind of paper did you use or did you collect? Is this paper that you found in the anatomy lab or something that you’re like, oh, grab that and quill it, or where’d you get the paper and how’d you decide?
Tuyet-Minh Tran:
Yeah, I wish it were that symbolic, but it’s literally a kit my parents bought for me on Amazon when I first got into paper quilling. I think it has to be a certain type of thickness to be able to maintain its rigidity while still being able to roll up and not have all these bends and kinks in the paper. But I used up all my different tones of reds for this. I thought it’d be a nice silhouette because for those who haven’t seen the piece, it’s basically a silhouette of all the muscles of the back with also a little bit of the face peeking out. So I feel like it highlights some of the anatomy of the body while still maintaining some of the humanity in the body with that piece of the face sticking out.
Rachel Mindrup:
Yeah, it’s great. Well, now that you ran out of the paper, how are you going to do the other sections of the body in paper quilling? Is that what’s next with this? Curious minds want to know. We’ve seen this now and we want more.
Tuyet-Minh Tran:
That’s a great question. Basically staying away from anything that involves the red muscles. I actually paper quilled a set of three pieces for one of the doctors who wrote me a letter of recommendation for residency. Luckily, she’s an ophthalmologist, so I used up some of my last strips of red for the muscles that go around the eye. And then I did a fun one of the iris and then one of the retina, so that nerve layer at the back of the eye, but I have to buy another kit at this point for the reds.
Rachel Mindrup:
I was going to say, are we going to be able to see those? I was just curious if we were going to see some eyes that are done in paper quilling.
Tuyet-Minh Tran:
I would love to submit some, so I made sure to take some good pictures of the pieces before I gifted it away.
Toni Gallo:
Yeah, I look forward to seeing those too. You mentioned this is something you started as an undergraduate, and how has that connection with, particularly as you’re thinking about anatomy and how has that shaped your experience as a medical student and now as you go into residency, do you think this is something that you’ll continue?
Tuyet-Minh Tran:
Definitely something I’ll continue. I think art is really nice because sometimes it can be literal, but other times it has an element of subjectivity and you start to think about your process before you put it onto paper. And so art has been a way for me to translate the literal things I do in life and kind of put some thought into it, into how medicine impacts not only me, but also the patient, also their family, also their caregivers, and the network that they exist in. And also me as a physician, but also as a person. So kind of just being able to use art as a form to reflect on my experiences.
Rachel Mindrup:
Well, and you mentioned that this was actually, the genesis was from an assignment. So it seems like, so you were given the option of whether to maybe write a reflection or to portray these thoughts through artistic medium. Is that correct?
Tuyet-Minh Tran:
Yes, that’s correct. Basically, the world was our oyster. We could have done whatever we wanted, and I just thought paper quilling was fitting, the strips of paper almost mimicked the muscle layers you see. And again, just that symbolism of, hey, we took the body apart in anatomy. Let’s put it all back together with this piece.
Rachel Mindrup:
How big is your piece? What are the dimensions?
Tuyet-Minh Tran:
I think the piece of paper that it’s mounted on is six by six, so the … six by six inches. So the quilling itself … yeah, not six feet.
Rachel Mindrup:
I was like, you’re doing a life size. Okay.
Tuyet-Minh Tran:
Yeah, no, no, no, no. That would’ve taken forever.
Rachel Mindrup:
You’d still be working on it right now.
Tuyet-Minh Tran:
Yeah, absolutely.
Rachel Mindrup:
Oh, so that’s really small and intimate then.
Tuyet-Minh Tran:
Yeah, really detailed, which I feel like lends itself to mimicking parts of the body with all the detail, the nerves, the different fascial layers. There’s so much complexity to the body.
Rachel Mindrup:
Yeah, very cool.
Toni Gallo:
And Rachel, what about you? Your role teaching art to medical students or incorporating art into the medical curriculum. Can you tell us a little bit about that and then maybe how that’s affected your own art?
Rachel Mindrup:
Yeah, there’s a nice relationship with both. I get the privilege to work with first and second year students in Creighton School of Medicine doing some of the similar things that Tuyet was talking about, but at least at Creighton, we’ve got the humanities sort of woven in to those first two years, which is kind of nice. So I’ve been lucky enough to get to actually work directly with the students with different projects like that. Nothing, maybe not paper quilling, haven’t gotten to do that. But I’m also able to bring exhibitions to Creighton that have that nice relationship of medical humanities. So over the years, we’ve been able to bring exhibitions of just different artists who work in that intersection of medical humanities. A couple of years ago we brought in Jeff Hanson. He was a legally blind artist who had NF, but he was creating paintings by feel with all these textures and everything.
Even with that, what we call or think of as perhaps a limitation, didn’t really stop him. His paintings were absolutely amazing and gorgeous and wonderful, and he was able to sell ’em at these different gala events and stuff. So by the time he was 20 years old, he had already raised a million dollars for charity, and so his goal was to raise $10 million for charity by the time he turned 30, but he passed away because of his NF, so his brain tumors had a different plan. So I brought in his parents who were continuing that legacy. What was fun was, besides bringing in his artwork, and we work with our undergrads too, so our undergrad students and our med students will work together and stuff, but they worked with the Hansons and actually created Jeff Hanson inspired artwork, having to try and figure out how to make artwork if you were also visually impaired.
And we did that. We had Eileen Powers work with our students. She was an artist out in Boston who had leukemia, so she had lost her hair just from all the different chemotherapy. And at the time, she said for her, when you’re going through chemotherapy, everybody wants to help, and the best way we know how to help is to give people food. And so she said her freezer was stuffed, so at some point, no more food. So she had come up with this, can you make hair for me kind of project and not like literal wigs, don’t really make hair for me. But she wanted everybody just, if you can find stuff around the house, it could be noodles, it could be some Velcro you have laying around, film strips, just what’s kind of stuff that you take, you don’t even realize that you have, and could you make some sort of hair out of that?
Our med students made hair for Eileen, so they brought stuff from home. I mean, some of it was tinfoil. One med student brought, she brought nuts and bolts, which I thought was really funny and these cords. And then she told me later that she didn’t realize that her dad did not want her cutting up all these cords and taking all the bolts, but she made this really cool “hair” that then we shipped all this work back to Eileen, and she took photos of it. Then we had an exhibition of her work, but it was all the “hair” that the Creighton students had made, and when we do this stuff, then of course Eileen was on Zoom talking with our students the whole time about what it’s like to actually go through chemo and a nice time to actually … and I think med students have such a … I don’t want to say an advantage a little bit, because they can actually spend a little bit more time sometimes with patients.
That’s just my opinion. I mean, I’m just a caregiver, but it just seems like med students sometimes do get to have a little bit more time so they can actually have these meaningful conversations. So for Eileen, she’s talking with the different med students while they’re making the hair for her, but they’re having these nice organic conversations about what is life actually when you’re living with cancer. So like I said, we’ve just been able to have some really, I think, impactful medical humanity themed exhibitions that both our undergrads and our med students, I mean, they just remember, it’s hard to not remember that impact of either making hair or like I said, and that’s just two of ’em. I’ve been doing this for a while, so I won’t take over the whole podcast with all the stuff we’ve done, but I try to keep it something that will be really engaging for the medical students to help put themselves in someone else’s shoes if possible.
Tuyet-Minh Tran:
I find it so interesting that you refer to yourself as “just” a caregiver. I feel like that’s actually the most important perspective to have. You get to see the ins and out of a person’s life, whereas on the medical team, sometimes we’re just there for a glimpse of things, and it’s really the context that people live in that really affects them the most.
Rachel Mindrup:
Oh gosh. I dunno. Like I said, well, all of you, the med students and the physicians, and I mean, I am just grateful you guys are, we need you. So yeah, I just represent the public here, the caregiver, but it’s like, no, we so need you guys. Yeah, I’m just so grateful and stuff. And like I said, I really am just a caregiver. I can only give those perspectives. I mean, I am not jumping in trying to figure out the diagnosis and figure out … that’s what … all of us are so … like I said, we’re all just grateful for everybody in the health fields too. I mean, when it comes to my son’s surgery, I am grateful to everybody, of course, the neurosurgeon, but the nurses, all of the people coming in, oh my goodness, which for brain surgery, it’s like 20 people later. It’s like, wait, what’s your role?
There’s all these people coming together like a huge interdisciplinary team to basically make sure my son is going to be fine. So yeah, I just always operate out of a realm of gratitude. But some of mine are, and really, so the artwork too, the ones on the cover, it’s like that’s really a caregiver’s perspective. I bet anything, if you asked some of the people on Henry’s team, what artwork would they make? I am sure they’d come up with a completely different type of visual. So that’s kind of funny. I didn’t know I was referring as just a caregiver, but I just want to make sure everybody knows I am not a physician. I’m not qualified to be giving any sort of advice in that sort of way. But yeah, as a mom with a kid with an incurable genetic disorder, we’ve definitely spent some time in various hospital settings and clinics.
Tuyet-Minh Tran:
I think that’s the beauty of artwork too, is that it calls all of those different perspectives into play at different times because sometimes what somebody sees through the lens of a caregiver or a parent is very different from what the people in the medical team are seeing. And I don’t think either is more important than the other. It’s sometimes a nice reality check to remember exactly what it is that you’re dealing with, which is a life and a person.
Toni Gallo:
And I think both what you’ve said here today and also the art that you are talking about brings out that this is a person, not just a disease, and whether it’s an anatomical donor or a patient, how do you think that role of art in sort of centering the patient as a person as opposed to just treating a disease, either from an educator perspective or a learner perspective, can you maybe reflect on that a little bit of how art can uniquely do that?
Rachel Mindrup:
Well, I would say at least with visual artwork, but this could be applied to poetry or novels or anything like that. But I mean, you do actually invite the viewer to just simply pause. I mean, think of how we’re always going. We’ve got a million things to do, all this stuff, but I mean, when you stop to look at a piece of artwork, well, you really are just actually pausing. You’re actually stopping to look at it for a moment and linger. And so it’s like, well, of course then you’re kind of wondering, what is this? Then maybe who is this? Or what is this about? What’s going on in this picture? Why was this even created? I mean, all of those questions are kind of going on, and I just think art, especially when it comes to healthcare, I think sometimes visual art can sort of break down, honestly, some of the complexities going on into a digestible format for the rest of us to ponder and consider.
Tuyet-Minh Tran:
Yeah, I think my piece started out as a very technical piece. I was deliberate about the silhouette, but as a piece itself, it’s a bunch of muscles there. But I think, like Rachel said, it’s about that pause and how the viewer interprets it that’s really powerful. And so a lot of times when people have taken a look at the piece I made, they’re like, wow, this looks so intricate. Look at all the little coils. And it’s like, yes, this is art, but also the human body is just that intricate. You have these tiny nerves just coursing between muscles and all the pieces of the spine and how the fascia connect things together. And so the intention of the people making the art portrays one thing, but a lot of the time the beauty is in the eye of the beholder and how they interpret the piece of art itself.
Toni Gallo:
And what do you think on the other side of being the viewer, whether personally or just sort of physicians in general, what that experience is like and how it can sort of help you? We had an episode about the medical humanities last year where the guests talked about learners will come into a healthcare system that is not ideal, that maybe they wish could be better, and the art can help them process all of that. What are they experiencing? What is their place in the greater world of medicine? How do you think about all of that being a viewer of art?
Rachel Mindrup:
Well, again, I think it depends on the different pieces, but a lot of times it kind of lets you know you’re not alone. So sometimes you have these feelings, depends on what your experiences are. I think all of us at some point have been a patient as well. So I feel like all of us have had that. But sometimes you can look at a piece of artwork and it’s like, oh, okay, yeah, I’ve been there. I actually know exactly what that, so the way somebody, just, the way they create a scene and it’s like even with … I shared that Henry has NF and that kind of stuff. I’m not sure you need to have NF to look at my artwork to say that you kind of know what’s going on, you understand the feelings I had, but you don’t need to suddenly have your PhD and all the intricacies of neurofibromatosis to look at the work and feel like you understand, or same with Tuyet’s piece. You don’t have to be a master of anatomy to look at her work and appreciate that and think about it and that sort of thing. So for me, a lot of times it’s just that idea as an onlooker that you’re not alone. This is kind of a shared, maybe a bit of a shared experience about the human condition.
Tuyet-Minh Tran:
I think for me, with artwork also, it kind of challenges my own perspective on things. So for example, Rachel, with your piece “Ill-Fitting” depicting the gown. Sometimes for me when I’m helping a patient take off their gown, I’m like, why are these straps so annoying. Why are they always tangled up? Why is this gown always in the way? And of course, it shouldn’t be that way to fall into that pitfall of thinking, but for other people, that gown is something that’s covering up a patient’s body day in, day out. It’s a loss of their ability to wear their favorite clothing, their shorts, they’re kind of stuck to the bed. And so it’s just a nice call to think about how your perspective isn’t the only one and how there’s so many different parties involved, especially in the care of a patient and a person overall.
Rachel Mindrup:
Yeah, I really like that.
Toni Gallo:
Have you all had conversations with others about either the pieces we’re talking about here or other art that you’ve done and what it means to them, what it means to you? What’s represented and its connection to medicine?
Rachel Mindrup:
Well, I certainly have, so besides the two pieces I was talking about with my son that appeared on the covers, in addition to that, I’ve been painting portraits of people who live with neurofibromatosis for about 15 years. Most of my work is going to be portraits of people. So I have lots of conversations. Of course, I’m very lucky to get to meet all sorts of different people. But it’s kind of fun too, because in one sense, the genetic disorder is what kind of unites us all with this project. But when you look at the paintings, it’s like, well, their paintings are usually each person is just doing what he or she enjoys doing. So when you look at my paintings, it’s like, oh, well, this person’s baking a cake and this person’s whatever, watching birds or whatever their personalities are. So I mean, we have a lot of conversations about basically you are who you are, and then, oh, by the way, you also have NF.
But in those paintings it’s like, well, whoever you are or whatever your interest is is forefront. And then the genetic disorders takes a backseat to that. So yeah, so as far as other artwork, I’ve obviously been doing a lot of that. And then like I said, it just with Henry, then I get to do or I tend to do things that are a little bit more personal. So those are probably a little bit more me showing what I’m thinking as a mom, whereas the others are much more outward facing portraits. And those really are also just to raise awareness about neurofibromatosis. I’m not sure, I know many of us, and many of the people who probably are listening to the podcast are familiar with NF, but a lot of people in the general public just, they just aren’t sure what you’re talking about. So the portraits have always been really a good way for me to raise awareness about the genetic disorder and actually show that there’s no face to it. So that’s always the irony is I’m a portrait painter who’s trying to show you what NF looks like, and there’s no actual face to the disorder because it presents differently from person to person.
Tuyet-Minh Tran:
It’s interesting. I feel like my artwork is a lot more literal, and sometimes it’s not quite that thought provoking on the surface, but I feel like most of the conversations I’ve had about my pieces are usually about how delicate they are, the small scale, and they’re like, oh, is this why you wanted to pursue ophthalmology? And in a sense, it was, I really like small detailed surgeries rather than the big scale ones. And so that connected in a sense. But I feel like for me, art is a really nice way to sustain that interest with the hand skills in a way that’s still a hobby that’s still fun for me on the side.
Toni Gallo:
You mentioned when we were talking earlier that this piece took you about as long to create as the back dissection actually took.
Tuyet-Minh Tran:
Yes. Yeah. So the piece I made, the “Ode to Anatomical Donors,” that took about 25 hours to put together again for that six inch by six inch piece. And I went back after I made the piece and I calculated how much time we spent in anatomy lab for all the musculoskeletal system, and it was about that long. So just a fun parallel, again, just how intricate the artwork is and just how intricate it is to take apart the body and really understand it.
Rachel Mindrup:
Well, as a fellow artist, I so appreciate that because I think sometimes the best, most beautiful artwork are these small, intimate little things. It’s like when you go to the art museum sometimes. Sometimes people will just run and run down the hall and go to the biggest painting they can find and stare at it, and it’s like you might’ve just ran past a whole bunch of little miniatures or little etchings or little drawings on your way to run to this big painting or something. So as an artist, I appreciate … sometimes I just appreciate … and then just the time, I totally believe that that took that long. I mean, there’s no way you can look at that piece and not know that that took some major time to do that.
Tuyet-Minh Tran:
Speaking of detail, I ran into this artist in Portland. Her name is Sienna Art Studios, and she basically puts together these pieces that are just equations written again and again, and then it forms the bigger piece of art. So for example, she had a piece of I think the eye, and it was written with all of the equations for the optics of the lens and vision. She has one of the kidneys, the brain, all sorts of stuff in nature too. So I think it’s sometimes that detailed nitty gritty that makes your picture, that’s just so fascinating.
Rachel Mindrup:
Oh, yeah, I know that I would find that cool. For sure. I just appreciate sometimes just for me too, the intimate, so the fact that your piece is only six inches by six inches, but you have to actually really stop and really look at that and see all the time and the energy into this little intimate piece. Yeah, I say that having … as the lady who just made the 30 what … 36 by 48 into oil painting, but I really do, and sometimes I have to actually tell my students too. I think sometimes they think that they’ve got to make big, big stuff, make big paintings, and it’s like, no, you don’t have to always make big paintings. You can make a beautiful statement about whatever it is you want to say, but sometimes you can make a beautiful, nice, intimate little statement. So sometimes I have to convince him. Sometimes a smaller painting is sometimes will say what you need it to say. Sorry, can you tell my teacher thing is on now? It doesn’t always have to be some six foot painting you guys. Yeah, sometimes just the best stuff can be nice and intimate and small.
Toni Gallo:
I thought it was interesting too. You compared the fine motor skills between the paper quilling technique and some of the clinical skills. And that feels like another connection where kind of those small detailed movements and motions make a difference.
Tuyet-Minh Tran:
Yeah, especially with paper quilling, it’s such small strips of paper, and once you bend it into shape, you kind of don’t want to mash it around. So I’m usually using tweezers to kind of dip each piece into glue and then place it down really precisely. I think the toughest ones are when I’m just gluing down the strips before I’ve coiled them up. So again, maybe a millimeter thick and I’m cutting it to the precise shape or precise length that I want, and then placing it down. So I knew I always wanted to use my hands, whatever field I went into in medicine. And so I thought maybe some bigger surgical subspecialty. And then I realized I really liked the teeny tiny, tiny surgeries.
Rachel Mindrup:
At what point did you decide that? Where in your educational journey did you decide? I want the small intricate …
Tuyet-Minh Tran:
I was always interested in ophthalmology just because of my own background, but I kept an open mind going into medical school and really tried to explore other subspecialties. And I remember distinctly, it was during a colonoscopy, they were looking for something, and in the words of the GI doctor, he said, sometimes we just have to poke around until we find it. And I was like, I hate that. I just want to be precise. Want to nail it down pat. So I think there was some time in my third year when I was like, yeah, I think it’s actually the small stuff that I find the most satisfaction in.
Rachel Mindrup:
That’s so interesting. So my son also sees a neuro-ophthalmologist just because he’s got this optic glioma and stuff. But what’s interesting is, so we’ve been seeing this neuro-ophthalmologist ever since he was a baby, but the other neuro-ophthalmologist that he works with, I was chatting with her, so she did one of those, Hey, I got to talk to you. So she’s like, you’re an artist. And I’m like, yeah, she does these eyeball paintings. So she’s also this artist who’s a neuro-ophthalmologist, and in her free time she’s doing these amazing paintings of eyeballs and stuff. So now you’ve got me wondering, is everybody who’s in ophthalmology or is everybody a visual artist? There must be a link here. But yeah, she goes, I love painting eyeballs. Anyway, and they were really cool. Of course they were. But yeah, so I’m like, maybe there’s a link.
Tuyet-Minh Tran:
It’s fun because ophthalmology is a very visual subspecialty. You get to look at patient’s eyes under the microscope up to 40 times of magnification. You can see all the way to the back of the eye through the pupil. And so I get to look in and see exactly everything I need to see just through the microscope.
Toni Gallo:
I think it’s kind of neat. We’re talking a lot about how the arts and humanities can help learners learn about themselves and maybe where they want to go in their career and also learn about medicine and what it’s like to be a clinician. You both talked about courses or curricula at your institutions. Are there other things that are happening in the way that the arts have been incorporated into medicine or medical education that either is really neat or where there are still some gaps that you would love to see addressed?
Tuyet-Minh Tran:
At least at UVA, we offer a course called Healers Art, I think in the first year in medical school. And that’s offered at several medical schools across the nation. So it’s not just UVA, but it’s basically a course that calls students to reflect on their experiences, not just within the nitty gritty of medicine, but more so with coping with grief for the patient and the provider, with wellness, with kind of sustaining your own wellbeing as a clinician when all of your life is kind of dedicated to the wellbeing of others. And so I think in this course there was less of the visual arts, but more so written art, prose, self-reflection, journaling. But that was great in the first year. And I think UVA does a really good job of trying to sustain that throughout all of medical school, but sometimes it becomes a time constraint where you’re spending so much time in clinic and you just have to be a little bit more deliberate about debriefing about it. But I thought UVA did a fantastic job with it throughout my four years.
Rachel Mindrup:
Well, just to second that, I do think it’s much more prevalent and stuff. I think different universities and schools just around the country and stuff are all kind of realizing the benefit of medical humanities and seeing that it does indeed have an impact. Creighton, of course, has the Master’s of Medical Humanities program. I just feel like there’s this need for it, obviously. I mean, a lot of these different institutions are kind of seeing that the students also are actually very interested in this, and some of it is also for their preservation and how do they process? I mean, when I work with med students too, it’s like how do you process some of this? These are heavy topics and heavy things that they are encountering now and will encounter as a physician. And in some regards, we want to make sure there isn’t physician burnout.
And so how can we also let the arts and beyond visual art for sure, poetry writing, some of these other sort of outlets, but are we making sure that we are also preparing our physicians to be well-rounded full human beings, not just basically burning out and just after every six minutes you’re running to see another patient. It’s like our physicians are people too who need this and need an outlet. And I think the medical humanities allows that opportunity. And obviously beyond Creighton, there is what’s called the Health Humanities Consortium. So every year rotates from different universities. Creighton, our medical school in Phoenix hosted it last year, but it was at Case Western, it was at Vanderbilt. It moves around the country. So that’s a nice coming together of like-minded people all sort of looking in different ways of how to incorporate the humanities either into the curriculum or for their own research.
So I think it’s getting more and more sort of, I don’t want to say accepted, but thought of and integrated. So actually when I started, honestly, I didn’t know I was doing medical humanities. So when I started, I’m not sure there was actually a term for it. I was like, maybe that just means I’m old, but it’s like I’m just painting portraits of people with NF. I just want to raise awareness. And then over the years it’s like, okay, this actually has a term. And it’s just more and more people, I think are sort of seeing the value of what this is and what it can do and how it can be helpful, like I said, in that conference or that consortium is kind of a nice coming together of people all over the country and stuff, kind of sharing thoughts and ideas.
Tuyet-Minh Tran:
Yeah, I agree with everything you said, Rachel. I think it’s nice that within medicine, people are starting to actively create space for the medical humanities. I know at UVA, there’s also the Hook Scholars program, which takes about maybe six students a year and they dedicate some time to creating a project within the realm of medical humanities. So I think it’s just a nice facet of medicine that we don’t always think about when we’re stuck in the nitty gritty of the kidneys or something like that. Just something to bring us back to why we came here and who it is that we care for.
Rachel Mindrup:
Yeah, well stated.
Toni Gallo:
So we’re just about at the end of our time. I want to give you each a chance if you have any final thoughts you want to share, and if you want to tell listeners where else they can find you and your artwork if they’re interested in learning more. Rachel, you want to go first?
Rachel Mindrup:
As far as where to find my artwork, feel free to just go to rminddrip.com. I post everything there. That’s just my website. Or of course, Instagram. Not quite as savvy on that one. So maybe just the website’s good. But yeah, you can find me there. And thanks for having me. I’ve enjoyed our conversation today.
Tuyet-Minh Tran:
I’m not as high tech. I don’t have my art in a platform yet, but I was asked that so many times on the interview trail that I’ve started thinking about putting together some sort of portfolio on a website or Instagram. But as of right now, you cannot find my artwork on the internet. But thank you for having me.
Most of the time, the pieces that I’m making are gifted to other people, and so it’s not too often that I actually create artwork that I keep for myself, but I should do a better job of documenting it all. And I think overall, just getting to do art, make art is a really nice way for me to reflect on things that I see in daily life. Just calls into question the other perspectives and makes me grow as a person and a clinician. So thank you for having me.
Toni Gallo:
Thank you both for being here. And I want to encourage our listeners to look for the covers that we talked about today with Rachel’s and Tuyet-Minh’s artwork. The cover art feature … We have an open call for artwork every other year, so in 2026 will be our next call. If you are an artist, please submit your work and we’d love to see it. Perhaps we’ll see some other paper quilling eyeballs or other things. But take a look next year for that call. And thank you both again for being here. This was a great conversation.
Rachel Mindrup:
Thanks for having me.
Tuyet-Minh Tran:
Thank you.
Toni Gallo:
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