The McGoogan Health Sciences Library has a new collection available for checkout: Graphic medicine.
Graphic medicine is the intersection of the comics medium and health care. Due to this purposefully broad definition, many materials fall underneath the graphic medicine umbrella. These materials may include educational comics created for students or patients, short comic strips created about health care, online webcomics centered around health care or longer graphic novels written as memoirs of illness.
The McGoogan Library’s new graphic medicine collection is focused solely on graphic pathographies in the physical graphic novel format. This collection seeks to promote empathy in our current and future health care workforce by promoting understanding of various health care experiences through the art of visual storytelling.
Contained in the collection are the experiences of patients, patient families and health care providers. Graphic medicine spans all health care fields, and among the new collection are topics on public health issues such as sexual violence and abuse, as well as numerous health diagnoses including epilepsy, gender dysphoria, eating disorders, depression, cancer, autism, chronic pain and irritable bowel syndrome.
The collection is available for checkout through the library catalog. To learn more about graphic medicine and explore the collection, locate it in the library catalog by visiting the library’s Graphic medicine research guide.
Those interested in graphic medicine who wish to discuss it further, use it in the classroom or have recommendations for the collection can contact Jess King, assistant professor and education and research services librarian.