Emotion Medicine (EMOMED): Musicians and Animals during Critical Illness and Death
Name of applicant
Anja Marie Bornø Jensen
Title
Associate Professor
Institution
University of Copenhagen
Amount
DKK 6,983,735
Year
2024
Type of grant
Semper Ardens: Accelerate
What?
EMOMED aims to explore how musicians and animals can create unique emotional moments for patients, families, and staff during critical illness and death. By introducing the concept of “Emotion Medicine,” the project investigates what musicians and animals enable and evoke, and how these interactions seem to acknowledge patient personhood and provide extraordinary compassion in clinical settings.
Why?
Despite technological advancements, modern medicine often lacks a recognition of patient personhood beyond medical history and symptoms. Patients, families, and staff experience emotional and existential suffering that technology cannot ease. EMOMED provides valuable insights into integrating emotional dimensions into healthcare, potentially transforming compassion and care in modern medicine.
How?
EMOMED conducts fieldwork at Danish hospitals and hospices to observe how musicians and animals interact with patients, families, and staff. Based on classic and new anthropologial methods and teories, we explore and conceptualize what musicians and animals actually do when visiting suffering or dying patients. Thereby we can address unspoken existential dimensions of patient treatment and care.