A hospital art exhibition has gone on display to try to better staff interaction with patients.

Forty-eight portraits make up the ‘Patients As People’ project which is currently being shown at Whipps Cross University Hospital in East London.

Emma Barnard, the artist behind the display, says that the collaborative project between her, the patients and Barts Health consultant ENT surgeon Mr Michael Papesch, displays the various emotions which people go through during hospital treatment.

She said: “This exhibition is part of a larger project that is about the de-personalisation of patients that can happen in hospital, the feelings of losing your identity, and also of being overwhelmed or swamped by your illness.

Surgeon Michael Papesch welcomed the exhibition saying that the art work will remind hospital staff that each patient is on their own emotional rollercoaster.

He said: “The patient and I are two people in the same place, but with completely different experiences of the hospital visit.

“As a doctor I wanted to look at patient experience and different ways of understanding what the patients are going through mentally and emotionally and not just physically.

“Working with Emma allowed us to investigate this through the medium of fine art photography as a radically different way of assessing patient experience."

The exhibition will remain at Whipps Cross until the end of April and can be seen in the Outpatients main entrance between 8.30am and 6.30pm.