CEO CONNECTIONS TO ARTS IN MEDICINE
Leadership commitment leads to treating the whole patient
(all photos prior to COVID-19 protection protocol)
This year we celebrate 30 years of the UF Health Shands Arts in Medicine program, or AIM, in part because of the specific and exceptional support from top leaders, specifically:
- Paul E. Metts, C.P.A., Shands Hospital CEO from 1987-97
- Richard Gaintner, M.D., Shands HealthCare CEO from 1997-2001
- Timothy M. Goldfarb, M.H.A., UF Health Shands CEO from 2001-15
- Ed Jimenez, UF Health Shands CEO from 2015-present
Healing through art
John Graham-Pole, M.D., MRCP, ABHM, a now-retired UF Health Shands Children’s Hospital pediatric hematologist/oncologist, UF professor emeritus of pediatrics, oncology and palliative care and medical director of the Bone Marrow Transplant Unit, began writing poetry as a way to come to terms with being a cancer specialist for young people. It helped him and planted the seed of bringing art to the patient bedside.
Graham-Pole was motivated in early 1990 to write an article entitled “Exploring the Connection” about art and medicine for the magazine, House Calls, a magazine that was sent to all physicians in Alachua County. The wife of a local orthopedic surgeon read Graham-Pole’s article and called him. The woman who reached out was a nurse, Mary Rockwood-Lane, Ph.D., R.N., FAAN., an associate professor in the UF College of Nursing. Rockwood-Lane shared with Graham-Pole that she was also an artist.
“We got together and before we knew it, we had a gathering to bring artists from around the community together to explore how we might bring the arts in the form of artists into the health center in one form or another,” Graham-Pole said.
Graham-Pole and Rockwood-Lane went on to establish the innovative artist in residence program, which they named Arts in Medicine and led for the next 15 years.
Around the same time, Melvin L. Rubin, M.D., M.S.C., UF College of Medicine chair and an ophthalmology professor, hired Tina Mullen, director of the UF Health Shands Arts in Medicine program, as a consultant to see how art collections could positively impact the hospital.
After a year, Graham-Pole and Mullen learned of each other and decided to meet in front of the UF Health Shands Hospital Atrium.
“We decided we should join our forces, if you will, and from there it grew rather steadily,” Graham-Pole recalled.
Pitching their plan to Paul Metts
Graham-Pole and Rockwood-Lane continued to see that joining arts and medicine was truly helping patients so they pitched the unique initiative to Metts.
“John was a pioneer in pediatric bone marrow transplant and his recommendations carried a great deal of weight and warranted serious consideration,” Metts said. “Things I considered were the concept of treating the whole patient — the physical malady and their mental state, and providing pleasant distractions that engage children who are often not able to rationalize where they are and what is happening to them.
“The enthusiasm that John and Mary brought to the meeting made such a strong impression, it would have been hard to resist their proposal,” Metts said.
The Arts in Medicine program launched in 1990 with the initial investment approved by Metts, which was matched by a Florida Division of Cultural Affairs grant that allowed them to develop meaningful programming.
Understanding the difference art makes

The AIM program was a natural for Metts because he had already witnessed its positive effects.
His wife, Stephanie, was a Pink Lady in the late 1980s and led an art program for mothers of critically ill children and women with high-risk pregnancies. The 30-minute classes not only gave these women an opportunity to take their minds off their daily stress, but brought them together with others facing similar hardships.
“One of the things we found was that when the mothers were in the hospital, they were worried about their kids at home,” Stephanie Metts said. “If the mothers could make something, they could send it home to those kids who didn’t understand why their mother wasn’t coming home, and let them know she was thinking of them.”
Earning trust with full-time artists

Metts retired as CEO in 1997 and Gaintner was appointed as his replacement.
He and his wife, Sue, also saw the valuable influence art had and created the Gaintner Family Endowment for Arts in Medicine.
“We discovered pretty quickly that in establishing trust among your health care providers, you have to be consistent, you have to be professional and you have to show up when you say you’re going to show up,” Mullen said. “That meant paying and training a group of professional artists to do work. So we really focused on fundraising and that’s why the Gaintner Family Endowment was so important.”
Strong leadership moves AIM into the future
Enter 2020 and the global pandemic with protocols for quarantining and physical distancing. Mullen quickly realized the typical interactions between the AIM artists and patients inside the hospital would have to stop; they had to come up with a new plan.
“We didn’t need to be on those units with how unpredictable and vulnerable everything was to both the patient and the artist. We couldn’t continue business as usual,” Mullen said. “I shared my thoughts with Ed Jimenez and he encouraged our team to be creative and come up with new processes that would work for both the patients and our team. So, my team went about the business of reframing what it meant to deliver these services without being able to be with somebody in a patient room. And we did it.”
“I give Ed credit for challenging us to find a way to continue to provide our services to patients, visitors, staff — everyone,” Mullen said. “He motivated us to do just that. I give the artists credit for figuring out how to make it happen.”
There have been a countless number of individuals who had faith in the valuable role AIM could play in the healing process. Now, 30 years later, we celebrate the success that came from the decisions and support of our CEOs and leaders who backed the program, created an endowment and provided the challenge to succeed in the face of adversity.
* This article was updated on Oct. 5, 2020.