Output details

Dermatomes

Fleming was Principal Investigator in a Wellcome Trust funded team that rigorously mapped dermatomes onto living human body. Dermatomes are areas of skin supplied by a single spinal nerve and are important in illness and anaesthetics. There are standard maps of dermatomes in medical textbooks but this was not about illustration. Together with medical collaborators from Durham University, Fleming developed a protocol to rigorously map the 2D data to living anatomy using cross-disciplinary teams to confirm standardisation. The methodology was quantitative and qualitative. ‘Think Aloud’ Protocols (or TAP) captured responses. This enabled researchers to assess the process of task completion (rather than its final aesthetic or medical product). TAP was recorded concurrently and collected in retrospective analysis. The research revealed significant anomalies in the texts that had not previously been appreciated by professionals familiar with them.

Further work examining how the craft processes of looking, seeing, translating and creating change, learning and understanding. FOUR purposes for the artefacts were identified in fieldwork- information, empathy, explanatory and narrative. Fleming, McLachlan, Finn and team members presented papers and demonstrations in education and in public contexts. Live performance was essential to communicating /proving the findings. Peer reviewed conference papers included Association of Medical Education in Europe (2009); Joint Conference National Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association (2009) ‘Textile Metaphors for Anatomy, The Body and Physical Difference’; European Textile Network International Conference 2008 (Keynote). Aside from clinical significance, how the conventional views came to be thus was questioned prompting new understanding of the maps which are found in most doctors' surgeries.

The depth of engagement and collaboration was recognized in an invitation to Fleming to be a keynote speaker at the Wellcome Trust launch of ‘Medical Humanities Frontiers’ in September 2009. This distinct body of work was sometimes exhibited with output 4.