Med student meets metaphor: Comics in med school

In medical school, there are few opportunities for students to stop, pause and reflect on where they ’ve been, who they’ve become and where they are going. At Penn State College of Medicine, one physician professor is using comics to teach medical students how to creatively reflect on their experiences as they form their professional and personal identity. For seven years, Michael Green, MD, an internist and bioethicist at Penn State where he is vice chair of the department of humanities and director of the program in bioethics, has taught a class called “Comics in Medicine.”“The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls,” Pablo Picasso said. And that’s what the “Comics in Medicine” course is all about, according to Dr. Green. When it comes to understanding an important experience, talking about it is good, writing about it may be better, but finding a creative way to express feelings visually can help the artist—or student—better grasp what the experience was all about.“Medical school is an intense experience,” Dr. Green said. “It’s like running a marathon at sprint speed—you never slow down. During this course, [medical students] get to slow down, pause and try to make sense of who they are right now.” And, the juxtaposition of words and images in the comic format provides an effective medium for students to reflect on the formative experiences of medical school. In anarticle published inAcademic Medicine, Dr. Green d...
Source: AMA Wire - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Source Type: news