Arts Medicine in Vancouver, WA.

Arts medicine is hand and upper extremity therapy built around the specific, repetitive, often extreme demands that creative work puts on the hands. A violinist’s fourth finger, a potter’s wrist under constant rotational load, a sculptor’s grip on a chisel for hours, and a producer’s hands hunched over a controller for a late-night session are not interchangeable problems. Each one loads the hand differently, and each one has a different point where “good enough for daily life” stops being good enough for the work.

On our team, arts medicine is handled by a therapist who works specifically with performing and visual artists, including musicians, sculptors, painters and electronic producers. That means the evaluation goes further than a standard hand exam: it asks what your instrument, tool or setup actually demands, and builds the plan around getting you back to that, not just back to a jar lid.