I've noticed something lately about communication in the medical field. The subject really grabbed my attention when I read this article about comics.
It has been going on for awhile, but I've recently seen a few projects dealing with how medical information and training is creatively comminucated in what, for me, are unexpected ways—specifically using comics. Particularly in this cases it strikes me as an interesting combination; an oftentimes dry, complex and serious a subject as medical information can be communicated so beautifully and fully with art. Sometimes that expression is taken to more abstract extremes, and I wonder how far and in what cases the interpretation of a subject or message can effectively be pushed into extreme creative territory.
Dr Ian Williams has written some nice words about comics and medicine on Graphic Medicine. He talks about how comics can help relate personal experiences of medical issues and enable discussion of difficult subjects. He also puts it nicely in saying "the depiction of illness influences the perception of illness."
I Am Not These Feet by Kaisa Leka
I Am Not These Feet is a comic by Finnish artist Kaisa Leka in which she depicts herself as a mouse. It's about the process of having her feet amputated and replaced by mechanical prosthetics. It's a fascinating way to communicate an experience from a different direction than head-on; instead of a straightforward portrayal of one woman's experience of a medical procedure, she shows the experience via a cartoon mouse. And by going in the side door to the subject, the reader sees the experience in a different way. I like the tactics and thinking behind that.
Comics are also widely and skillfully used within a health education context. On the less-than-subtle end of the spectrum, Medikidz has made comics that explain illnesses, treatments and procedures to kids. Comics are being made to address, educate and communicate experiences of anything from Crohn's Disease to mental illness.
One of the most interesting things to me is when medical schools have used comics as part of the coursework—both reading and making—in order to help medical students understand and figure things out. Making a comic out of what you're trying to say or get your head around forces to you to think of it in a different way and to clarify it with both words and pictures before you can accurately portray it in graphic form. For me it's related to the idea that drawing and doodling being a way to help your mind figure things out.
It's probably because medical information can be so complex that it can be so interestingly express with comics and performance, but it's probably also because medicine is—in a very pure sense—human. It takes human media to express it best.