Graphic Storytelling & Medical Narratives

A collection of graphic stories by fourth-year medical students at Penn State College of Medicine

Since 2009, fourth-year medical students at Penn State College of Medicine have created comics as part of a course called “Graphic Storytelling and Medical Narratives.” The course was developed to show fourth-year medical students how graphics and text can be used to effectively communicate complex medical narratives, and to help students develop their own stories into graphic depictions.

Taught seminar-style, the course requirements are minimal: participate in all classroom activities, be good colleagues to one another, and produce a short, original, graphic narratiive, or comic.

Of course not all medical students are naturally gifted writers or artists, but as one can see from the following pages, everyone can tell stories and everyone can draw pictures. While this course is unlike any other in their medical school experience, the students rise to the task, sharing their reflections on becoming a doctor with honesty, wit, and creativity.

Articles about the storytelling class:

Click on the links below to download pdf's of individual articles
Beyond Superheroes: Comics as a New Genre for Medical Storytelling
Article in Lancaster Intelligencer Journal

Other Resources on Graphic Medicine:

Click on the links below to access other resources
Graphic Medicine Blog
Graphic Medicine Webpage
Article in BMJ

Enjoy the following Graphic Storytelling and Medical Narratives by the medical students at Penn State College of Medicine! (Click on Narrative Title to view).

Michael Green, MD, MS, FACP
Course Director, Professor of Humanities and Medicine
 

Graphic Narratives by Medical Students

2009	2010	2011	2012
Marlana Orloff  I Never Learned  This During Island  Week	Ashley Pistorio  Vita Perseverat	Annie Park  She Wolf: How Lupus  Changed My Heart	Taylor Olmsted  The Taming of Tina
Dawn Flosnik  The Match	Erin Murata  Labor of Love	Arash Salavitabar  New Hope in Ecuador	Sara Farag  The Game of Life
Kathy Marshall  Orange You Glad I Didn’t  Say Heart Attack?	Justin Zelones  My Babies Cleft	Emmanuel Yacoub  August 2009-  Pediatric Clerkship	Ryan Svoboda  Medical Ethics 101
Lindsey McCormick  A Quiet Night	Jordan Lichty  July	Katee Beaudry  Cherry Pie	Albert Cheung  Travel to Peru
Adrian Ionescu  Scrubbed In	Godfrey Thuku  Beware of Your  Hospital Visitors!	Kavita Vakharia  Tales from the Trail	Brian Sykes  Safe at Home
Wilson Almonte and  Romita Rupani  Untitled	Michael Pitzer  Medical Student:  A Tragic Comedy	Kie Lee  My First Big Case	Sarah Marie Lucking  How a Green Chili  Cheeseburger  Almost Killed Aunt Cindy
Christian Squillante  Untitled	Shilpa Sawardekar  Based on a True Story	Mary Anne Carrillo  Life Lessons of  the O.R.	Jeff Monk   A Ghost of an Idea
Damian Dyckman  Defending a Dream	Sasha Svendsen  Close, But No Champagne	Nikkole Haines  A Call to Prayer	Jonathan Chu  Case Files:  Medical Humanities
Diana Minto  The Short White Coat	Stamatis Zeris  The Psychiatry Residency  Interview Trail	Anonymous  Tic Toc
Ken Montini  Seasons		Yvonne Tsui  Adventures in  the O.R.
Lisa Michelle DePuzzo  Medical School Made  Me a Doctor
Michael Albin  Untitled
Nikhil Patel  Braveheart
Tasha Kouvatsos  The Game of Life