The human body is complex. Arteries, nerves, systems.
When Amy Avila was learning anatomy, she knew she was a visual learner. So the student nurse anesthetist began sketching out what she was learning — arteries leading to the heart, the body’s nerve systems.
These sketches became intricate drawings, and she realized that drawing helped her not only to learn the body but also to process some stressful situations that crop up while working in health care.
“I’ve used it as a stress reliever,” she said. “Sometimes it feels like they can bring order to a chaotic day”
She’s since created cards, stickers and magnets with drawings. Whenever she left an assignment while working at Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville, such as transferring floors or units, she would leave behind something she created, either an anatomical drawing she hoped would help others study the body, or a hand-drawn card as a thank-you.
Now, amid the coronavirus pandemic, Avila has created drawings she hopes will reduce stress for her colleagues. Avila, a student in Rosalind Franklin University‘s Doctor of Nursing Practice program, worked as a critical care nurse before going back to school in 2019.
She was in school during the pandemic, so she has not treated COVID-19 patients. But she saw how friends and colleagues were affected.
Facing burnout amid a prolonged pandemic, some hospital workers are stepping away after months turn into years of putting virus patients into body bags.
When the pandemic began, Avila saw a post from the Illinois Association of Nurse Anesthetists about wellness for health care workers. She began sharing some of her drawings, hoping others also would find it therapeutic to trace the lines or fill them in with color.
Her drawings show female reproductive organs, lung systems and the brain alongside intricate floral patterns.
“It’s very predictable, but within it you can change so much about it,” she said.
She has loved drawing since she was a little kid, asking for a box of art supplies each birthday and every year for Christmas.
As an adult, when coloring books became trendy as a relaxation tool, she gave them a try. But she realized, “I really wanted to draw that myself.”
She says that COVID-19 has impacted everyone, and still infects each part of health care. Patients are still taking COVID-19 tests; it’s a regularly asked question of both the sick and caregivers alike.
“Almost no one has not been touched by COVID somehow,” he said. “Nursing right now is so very stressful.”
She hopes that the sketches provide a level of meditation.
“You can’t control a lot of health care, and right now you can’t control health care at all,” she said.
Eventually, she’d love to put together a coloring book or something similar as a learning tool. Juggling school and two children, ages 14 and 18, that’s a project for a future when she has more time. She’d also love to create scrub caps with a brain on them, for example, or a thyroid shield with a drawing of a thyroid.
One patient, years ago, even asked if she could use the drawing Avila had created of a heart and lungs as a tattoo. The artwork showed blood morphing from blue to purple and red.
“It was really neat when she called me and she was like, ‘I’m at the tattoo place,'” she said.