By Erin Jester
When the time came for Daphne Blessing to choose a major going into her first year at the University of Florida in 2017, she had no doubt about her answer: art.
“I’ve always been an artistic, creative person,” she said. “That’s where I find a lot of my own happiness and expression of my emotions.”
Now, she’s using her passion to help others, as the first UF College of Public Health and Health Professions Doctor of Occupational Therapy student to complete her capstone project with UF Health Shands Arts in Medicine.
Blessing said she has always wanted to help people and was considering art therapy as a career option in high school. Prior to college, she loved painting with acrylic and watercolor and drawing with graphite, charcoal and ink. At UF, she expanded her art practice with printmaking, ceramics and sculpture. Blessing said she started to see how using fine motor skills to create art could translate into a therapeutic setting.
Early in her college career, an adviser mentioned she could apply her artistic talents to occupational therapy, a career path Blessing hadn’t previously known about. After shadowing some occupational therapists specializing in hand therapy and outpatient pediatrics, Blessing said, she knew it was the right path for her.
By that time, Blessing had already been bringing art into the community. She was a member of Project Makeover, a student run organization that beautifies one underserved Alachua County school per year with murals, landscaping and construction projects. She was the project manager during her fourth year, coordinating more than a thousand volunteers who worked nearly around the clock over a single weekend to transform the school into a more dynamic learning environment.
“It was one of the most rewarding projects ever,” and the highlight of her undergraduate experience, she said.
Blessing received her bachelor’s degree in visual arts in 2021 and began her doctorate a few months later. As she got busier with her course work, she said her personal art practice fell by the wayside. But when she started to plan her capstone project, she found herself reflecting on what motivated her to embark on her career path in the first place.
“For me, that was art,” she said. “It was a personal thing for me to go back to art for my doctorate.”
Her focus is bringing art programming to UF’s outpatient dialysis clinic, where patients spend up to 12 hours a week receiving treatment.
“When you’re there for four hours, three times a week, that’s a lot of time that you’re having to sit there and can’t get up,” she said. “It really disrupts routines.”
Twice a week, Blessing wheels her cart full of air-dry clay, wooden picture frames and birdhouses, canvases, paint and jewelry making supplies into the dialysis clinic. Some patients simply pick up some supplies and work independently. Others may have low vision, or limited muscle control due to stroke history, so she adapts the activity to the needs of each patient.
Blessing has led patients who are blind through jewelry making by setting up groups of beads that the patients can choose based on texture and verbally guiding them through the process. Or, she might help a patient who has experienced a stroke use their hand with poor motor control to hold the jewelry wire while they use their other hand to pick up and thread the beads onto the wire.
Some patients simply don’t have much experience with art, Blessing said, so she creates custom coloring sheets to help people engage in a way that doesn’t feel intimidating.
Providing a leisure activity can help patients undergoing dialysis feel more control over their experience, beat boredom, distract from pain and cultivate an identity beyond their illness.
A lot of the patients have really come to enjoy that routine and look forward to seeing her every week, Blessing said.
The profession of occupational therapy emerged in the early 20th century as part of the moral treatment movement, which sought to help people with mental illnesses recover by participating in meaningful activities. Veterans returning from World War I could participate in crafts as a method of rehabilitating their hands, for example.
In the 1970s and 80s, occupational therapy moved toward a more medical model. Because of that, Blessing said, there’s a gap in research about arts intervention in occupational therapy. That gap is where she wanted to focus her work, adding that existing research suggests recovery is more efficient than exercise-based activity that has no meaning behind it.
Blessing’s capstone project compares patients’ sense of wellbeing and engagement before and after interacting with art projects in the clinic. She will present her findings ahead of graduation in December.
“We’re looking forward to hearing more about what she’s found,” said Samantha Moss, senior program manager for UF Health Shands Arts in Medicine and site supervisor for Blessing’s research.
Moss said Arts in Medicine used to have a presence in the outpatient dialysis clinic, but currently focuses primarily on inpatient care. Because Blessing had volunteered with Arts in Medicine before, Moss knew she was a good candidate to revive the arts program in the dialysis clinic.
“The field of arts in health is unfamiliar to a lot of people,” Moss said, adding that it can be challenging to grasp for occupational therapists who don’t have an art background. “Daphne was a very special case in that she had volunteered with us before. She was well known and well loved. We knew she could understand the work fully.”
Blessing continues to bring art into the community outside of her doctoral project, as well. In September, she facilitated a community paint-by-number event as part of UF’s Cancer Chomp, where she used her occupational therapy training to guide a participant with visual impairment in painting a section of a large canvas.
After graduation, she hopes to start a career at an inpatient rehab facility where she can continue to incorporate art into her occupational therapy work.
Linda Struckmeyer, Ph.D., a clinical associate professor and doctoral capstone coordinator in the department of occupational therapy, said there’s been more interest in Arts in Medicine placements since Blessing started her project.
“Now that we’ve established it, it’s going to be a highly sought-after spot,” Struckmeyer said.
Arts-based occupational therapy programs could also be a benefit to patients waiting for or recovering from organ transplants, and any other medical setting where patients are spending an extended amount of time, Struckmeyer said.
“It can be depressing, or just boring,” she said. “[Occupational therapy] just helps with their overall health and wellbeing.”