Guest Post by Lucy Bergonzi Books Beyond Words is a publisher of picture-led books and resources for people with learning disabilities. These wordless stories, dealing with many of life’s issues, are designed for people who find it easier to read using pictures rather than words. I’ve been one of Books Beyond Words’ illustrators since 2015. The Covid pandemic has affected all of us to a greater or lesser extent, but for people with learning disabilities the crisis has been particularly difficult and damaging. The British Medical Journal says ‘the Covid-19 pandemic has had a devastating effect… Read More
Cartoons in Time of COVID
In Partnership with the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland (RCPI) Heritage Centre Exhibition curated by Dr. Eoin Kelleher and Harriet Wheelock, RCPI Keeper of Collections Guest Review by Jane Burns This exhibition has been developed from the artwork of Eoin Kelleher who has produced a series of Living with COVID Comics in the Irish Independent Newspaper since the start of the pandemic. Eoin is seasoned artist who has a fantastic way of connecting complex, emotive, and personal perspectives in comic formats. The exhibition is developed using Microsoft SWAY which makes it user friendly, interactive, and easy to share and… Read More
Spotlight Archive
Our “Spotlight” program was developed to feature new projects, books, research, and artists of note to the Graphic Medicine international community. If you’d like to be featured in a Spotlight post, click here for more information. Below you will find an archive of all of our Spotlight posts. The most recent features appear first. Spotlight: The Tear Bottle Spotlight: Eric Glickman Spotlight: Chronically Ill While Black: Endometriosis Spotlight: The Stroke Interventionalists’ Manual Spotlight: Through the MS Looking Glass Spotlight: The Intrepid Proton-Man and The Proton Pro-Team Spotlight: “In the Labyrinth of Dementia” Spotlight: Nate Fakes and A Fade of Light… Read More
A Hundred Thousand Knots and more – Spotlight on Kukka-Maria Kiuru
Alopecia has always been in my life. It runs in the family. I first got signs of it when I was 5 years old. At the time my parents didn’t know about the symptoms that some of my relatives had already had. Everything that happened because of my alopecia at that time left me with feelings of confusion and uncertanty. Years later, after losing all my body hair, I had to confront my own attitude towards this disease and figure out something to help me get through the bitterness and fear. Alopecia has very visual symptoms. Losing my hair, eyebrows… Read More
Call for participants – using sequential art in professional psychological practice.
Call for participants. For those of you in the Graphic Medicine community that I have not had the opportunity to meet or correspond with, my name is John Pollard and I am a psychotherapist based in London in the final stages of a doctoral qualification in counseling psychology. My doctoral thesis is a piece of qualitative research exploring how psychologists and psychotherapists use sequential art in their work. This research aims to create a representation of how sequential art is used in contemporary psychological practice. Rather than attempt to make a case for the potential of sequential art and how it could… Read More
A Love for Cartoons: Me and Graphic Medicine
Guest post by Priyanga Singh. The beginning of love My introduction to cartoons was in daily news paper strips, At that time I was very young and illiterate (by which I mean I wasn’t going to school yet) so, technically, cartoons were the first thing I learnt: ‘doodlogenesis’ occurred before I could write a word. Blank paper, pencils and scissors still fascinate me, inviting me to draw, cut and glue and that’s all I have been doing mostly. Drawing as a way of learning I was terrified by cell structure in 6th grade and I remember my mother drew cell structure… Read More
Graphic Pharmacy
Guest post by Giang Ho Pharmacy is a dreadful job. Who can really stand for 8-12 hours straight verifying prescriptions, dealing with medical insurance, with mean customers, having no bathroom or lunch break, working overtime then coming back the next day to repeat it all again? To many people, being a pharmacist means you must be amazing or just insane. When I started pharmacy school, I thought the same thing. But after three years in this field, I would say pharmacy is a very interesting and unique profession that is vastly misunderstood. I hope my comics work about pharmacy school can show what it is… Read More
Don’t be afraid of surgery! Comic monkey takes pediatric patients by the hand
Guest post by Claudia Thomas & Anne Schirrmeister A large body of evidence indicates that dealing with pediatric patients’ anxiety prior to surgical interventions is not optimal, and that this is true worldwide. Literature shows that preoperative anxiety results in increased pain after surgery, a higher incidence of postoperative delirium and longer hospital stays. In addition, behavioral disorders like enuresis nocturna and separation anxiety as well as sleep disorders and nightmares often occur. Developing easy-to-use and standardized tools for reducing preoperative anxiety in children could be an approach to address this problem. Using the ability of imagination and magic thinking… Read More
Primary Care as Adventure! By Richard Stark, MD.
Primary Care as Adventure! – guest blog by Richard Stark, MD. The rumors you’ve heard that Primary Care is boring and repetitious are not true! Primary Care is an adventure, and I’ve accumulated the stories and anecdotes over 40 years in medicine to prove it! Yes, you see the same patients year after year, in sickness and in health. But you learn a lot about people and their behavior. You also learn a lot about the attitudes and concerns of staff. And if you attain an administrative position in a bureaucratic healthcare organization you gain an appreciation of a… Read More
“It’s Probably Bullshit.” – Paramedic Adventures by Phoebe Cohen.
There is a small prayer that an EMS provider says whenever he is dispatched out to a particularly frightening call. “It’s probably bullshit.” It’s said with an expression of annoyance but is usually uttered to cover up a deeper feeling of unease. “Paramedic twelve, please respond to unconscious infant,” “Please respond to difficulty breathing, inhaler not working,” “Please respond to actively seizing toddler.” “Please respond to motor vehicle crash with unresponsive individual in driver’s seat.” Hearing all these calls it is easy for the new medic to feel panic. Even the older medics hate responding to the “shitstorms” or the… Read More