‘The Other Side of the Fence’ by Michael Corbo

Medical student Michael Corbo reflects on what he’s learnt from being a patient.
I am sitting on a green chair in the waiting room. I have been sitting here for hours, but it feels like it has been days. I keep looking at the clock on the wall beside me. The room is filled with people, but all I can hear is the resounding ‘tick tock’ coming from my right side. A thousand beads of sweat start to develop on my forehead, one for every thought racing through my mind.
“Michael Corbo!” My heart stops. “The doctor is ready for you now.”
I follow the nurse’s lead to the end of the hall where we stop at Operating Room (OR) #7.
The air in the OR is cold and crisp. I get on the table and lie down with my face towards the ceiling. Cold sweat begins to drip down my forehead. It is clear that I am apprehensive and yet, none of the healthcare providers have addressed how I am feeling. My hand nervously shakes as a line is inserted into one of my veins. I take one more gasp of air before my eyes gently close and will not open again for at least thirty minutes.
This is an experience that I have been through many times. However, it is the first time that I am the patient. After such an event, it has become clear to me that no matter how minor the procedure, the thought of surgical intervention and going under general anaesthesia is enough to generate a great deal of worry.
As a patient who was evidently nervous going into surgery, the question “why didn’t any of the healthcare providers address my feelings?” was still on my mind hours after the operation. I kept trying to tell myself that this question was irrelevant since the surgery was a success. However, as time passed and perspective was gained, I realized that my concern was a legitimate one. In a profession where another human being completely places their trust in you, how can the physician provide the best care without truly understanding what the patient is experiencing?
Understandably, the thought of entering into an emotional relationship with patients can be a scary notion. However, all medical specialties should have a keen focus on developing these skills and recognizing the most appropriate time to utilize them. To only treat a patient’s physical needs is inadequate; a Holistic approach in which emotional, mental, and physical aspects are all addressed would lead to increased patient satisfaction and care. This is not a skill that comes naturally, but must be practiced and perfected.
As a future physician, I sincerely hope that more resources can be invested into teaching medical students and residents how to treat the patient like a person, instead of just an interesting case. At the end of the day, the majority of people will not remember how well you performed at your job, but rather the level of communication and hospitality that they received while they were under your care.
michael.corbo@medportal.ca

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‘Comics & Medicine: The Sequential Art of Illness’: Conference, Chicago, 9-11 June 2011

This second international interdisciplinary conference* aims explore the past, present, and possible future of comics in the context of the healthcare experience.  Programs in medical humanities have long touted the benefits of reading literature and studying visual art in the medical setting, but the use of comics in healthcare practice and education is relatively new.  The melding of text and image has much to offer all members of the healthcare team, including patients and families.  As such, a subgenre of graphic narrative known as graphic medicine is emerging as a field of interest to both scholars and creators of comics.
We are pleased to confirm two important keynote speakers: David Small, author of ‘Stitches’ and Phoebe Gloeckner, author of ‘A Child’s Life’
We invite proposals for scholarly papers (15 minutes), poster presentations, and panel discussions (60 minutes), focused on medicine and comics in any form (e.g., graphic novels, comic strips, graphic pathographies, manga, and/or web comics) on the following—and related—topics:

• graphic pathographies of illness and disability
• the use of comics in medical education
• the use of comics in patient care
• the interface of graphic medicine and other visual arts in popular
• culture
• ethical implications for using comics to educate the public
• ethical implications of patient representation in comics by
• healthcare providers
• trends in international use of comics in healthcare settings
• the role of comics in provider/patient communication
• comics as a virtual support group for patients and caregivers
• the use of comics in bioethics discussions and education

We also welcome workshops (120 minutes) by creators of comics on the process, rationale, methods, and general theories behind the use of comics to explore medical themes. These are intended to be “hands-on” interactive workshops for participants who wish to obtain particular skills with regard to the creation or teaching about comics in the medical context.
We envision this gathering as a collaboration among humanities scholars, comics scholars, comics creators, healthcare professionals, and comics enthusiasts.
300 word proposals should be submitted by Friday, 28 February 2011 to submissions@graphicmedicine.org. Proposals may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats with the following information and in this order: author(s), affiliation, email address, title of abstract, body of abstract.  Please identify your presentation preference: 1) oral presentation; 2) poster presentation; 3) panel discussion; or 4) workshop. While we cannot guarantee that presenters will receive their first choice, we will attempt to honor people’s preferences, and will acknowledge the receipt of all proposals submitted. Abstracts will be peer-reviewed by an interdisciplinary selection committee. Notification of acceptance or rejection will be completed by 14 March 2011.
This event is co-sponsored by the Medical Humanities and Bioethics Program at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, the Department of Humanities at Penn State College of Medicine, and the Science, Technology and Society Program of Penn State University, and is supported by a grant from the Charles Schulz Foundation.
*Information about the 2010 conference, “Comics and Medicine: Medical
Narrative in Graphic Novels,” in London, England can be found at
www.graphicmedicine.org.
Dr Ian Williams

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“Newspeak (PART TWO): British Art Now is doubleplusgood!” by Dr Jane R Moore

A few weeks ago I visited the new exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery with my group of 4^th year King’s College Medical Students. Visits to galleries, museums and art installations are an integral part of the ‘The Good Doctor’ Special Study Module but I hadn’t included the Saatchi Gallery before.  Modern conceptual art is challenging and I was uncertain how this visit would help in our exploration of medical matters. I need not have worried; our visit was enjoyable, reassuringly accessible and it was easy to make links to the theme of goodness in contemporary medical practice.
Newspeak Two on display in the large bright rooms at the Saatchi Gallery, King’s Road, London continues the showcase of contemporary British Art started in June 2010 with Newspeak One.  All the original exhibits, including the widely advertised Pink Cher by Scott King, have been replaced and the new collection opened at the end of October.  Charles Saatchi’s Sensation! exhibition (Royal Academy 1997) had – sensationally -  brought late 20th century British Art to public notice. This was the outing of Damian Hirst’s shark, Tracey Emin’s unmade bed, Mark Quinn’s blood sculptures, Chris Ofili’s ingenious uses of elephant dung and the Chapman Brothers doing what they do best – shocking us into a reaction.  So what would we make of Newspeak?
George Orwell coined the term newspeak in his dystopian classic Nineteen Eighty-Four[i].  This was the deliberately duplicitous politicians’  language which removed all shades of meaning from words.  For example, “think” used as both noun and verb makes the word thought superfluous so it can be abolished;  if pleasure / pain becomes  ”goodthink” any negative connotations can be dismissed.  In this way the total dominance of the State was reinforced leaving the population passive and malleable.  By calling this collection Newspeak is Saatchi mocking contemporary art?  Or is he referring to present-day “artspeak”, an artificial, pretentious, hollow and at times unintelligible discourse?  For our group this was our first link to contemporary medicine as we considered the role of  “medicspeak”.
Our guide, a postgrad art student, showed us some of her favourite pieces and gave brief descriptions.    We appreciated this guidance which allowed us to move on to our own interpretations and make links to contemporary medicine and society. On our own I think we would have been at a bit of a loss. Though a description of all we saw would not be practical here are some highlights.
Gallery 3 contained three massive, detailed and beautifully painted canvasses of men and machines by Jonathan Wateridge.  We liked Space Program 2008, a group of men posed in front of a spaceship under construction.  However on close scrutiny you could see the spaceship was a milk bottle, the launch control panel a mobile phone key pad, and the astronauts ‘spacesuits’ ordinary workmen’s overalls decorated with bits of household tat. Yet the men, in reality the artist’s friends, give the appearance of authority and confidence. We were reminded of Luke Fildes’ iconic picture The Doctor (1887).  This picture, painted at a time of increasing mistrust in the science of medicine, managed to suggest that medicine and the establishment as a whole, had the power to confront the difficulties encountered by society[ii].  In the same way we are lead to think that Wateridge’s unlikely astronauts’ competence and skill will surely lead to a successful expedition to further man’s mastery of outer space and so all is well with the modern world.
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/artpages/jonathan_wateridge_space_group.htm
Anne Hardy (Gallery 5) has a series of four photomontages of ‘depopulated rooms that suggest surreal fictions’ according to the exhibition catalogue[iii]. What we saw were detailed photographs of the same space, some frames showing a clutter of carefully arranged seemingly miscellaneous objects:
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/artpages/anne_hardy_cell.htm
Other frames showed an empty space with the outside crowding in;
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/artpages/anne_hardy_drift.htm
We found these images claustrophobic but compelling; reminding us of both the workings of the human body with tortuous nerves and blood vessels, and of the machinery of modern medicine which cuts us off from normal communication with our patients.
In Gallery 10 The Followers, Ximena Garrido-Lecca has produced a huge reproduction of a Peruvian burial wall. Each niche containing photos, mementoes, plates of food or a bottle of beer by which the deceased were remembered by their grieving ‘followers’.  This is a beautiful exhibit, but after a short time as observers we became uncomfortable; we felt that we were intruding or showing a prurient misplaced interest in intimate details of people who had had no choice in the display and what it revealed. It was easy to make parallels to the role of the medical practitioner and our patients’ narratives.
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/artpages/ximena_garrido_followers5.htm
So how do I justify this visit to the Saatchi Gallery to look at contemporary British art?  How can such activity be a valid and relevant and relevant contribution to undergraduate medical education?
Artists observe, capture and record visual images; when patients describe events, feeling, concerns, they set scenes using their own imagery; in turn, doctors listening to patients’ stories and descriptions form pictures in their own minds.  Looking at paintings and any art installations increases our observational skills and allows us an opportunity to practice the interpretation of visual images.  By engaging with the story behind the picture we try to discover our own reactions and in group discussion we have the opportunity to explore these feelings further.
Our visit to the Newspeak exhibition stimulated important discussion about important aspects of contemporary medicine which may not be encountered elsewhere in the medical curriculum. We may not have been able to understand it all the exhibits but certainly some of the pieces we looked at in the Newspeak exhibition were wonderful. We came away feeling we had risen to the challenge that modern art had presented and as a result expanded our horizons.

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