Drawing (on) Life Experience – Professor Shelley Wall, the inaugural “Illustrator-In-Residence”, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto

New UME Elective Course

“Drawing (on) Life Experience – Professor Shelley Wall, the inaugural “Illustrator-In-Residence”, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto

 

SEMINAR DESCRIPTION:

This series of five weekly seminars for medical students from all four years of training at the University of Toronto will introduce participants to the use of illustration as a tool for observation, reflection, and communication in healthcare. In particular, we will consider visual storytelling through comics as a means to explore and express ideas about the illness experience and clinical practice from the healthcare professional’s, patient’s, and caregiver’s perspectives.

No previous drawing experience is required. The seminar is open to only 8 students and begins October 3rd, so register now!

Contact s.wall@utoronto.ca to enroll.

Meeting Room TBA.

Each seminar will consist of a brief introductory talk, a guided discussion of key examples from the emerging canon of graphic medicine, and a hands-on exercise. One major assignment will be completed outside of class time.

October 3: What is “graphic medicine”?
– the power of images
– the power of stories
– how do these intersect with evidence-based medicine?

October 10: Close Observation Unit
– drawing as a tool for observation
– bearing witness through illustration

October 17: Point of view
– physicians’ stories
– patients’ stories
– caregivers’ stories
– comics and bioethics

October 24: Condition-specific themes in graphic medicine
– cancer
– aging
– mental health

(October 31: no meeting)

November 7:
– presentation of students’ own graphic narratives
– debriefing discussion

INSTRUCTOR BIO:
Shelley Wall is a medical illustrator and an assistant professor in the Biomedical Communications graduate program, Institute of Medical Science. Her education includes an MScBMC from Biomedical Communications, UofT, a PhD in English literature from McMaster University, and a four-year diploma in fine art from the Ontario College of Art and Design.   She is the inaugural “Illustrator in Residence” at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto.
Graphic medicine — the study and creation of visual narratives about illness and healthcare — is currently one of Shelley’s main areas of interest.  In addition to creating her own medical comics, she teaches a graduate course in graphic medicine and was lead organiser of the third international  Comics & Medicine conference, held at UofT in July 2012.