Abstract:

The potential of comic resources, and in general of graphic narrative as an innovative tool for teaching in Health Sciences, has grown in recent years. During the COVID19 pandemic, outreach resources based on comics or infographics have been very well received as a method of bringing advances in research and the benefits of mass vaccination strategies to society, to name a few examples. However, for years now the term graphic medicine, coined by Ian Williams, has been used to define some works of fiction that use the language of comics to narrate stories closely related to the disease.
Our Consolidated Group of Teaching Innovation in Narrative Physiology has been using this type of resources and graphic medicine works for the teaching of physiology in various undergraduate subjects in the field of Health Sciences; as part of our latest teaching innovation project, we celebrated the first Meeting on Education, Teaching and Innovation with Comics (Jornada de Educación, Docencia e Innovación con Cómics, JEDI Comics) in which teachers involved in the use of these resources, as well as students participating in the National Physiology Comic Contest (FisioCómic) met together with renowned authors of works with the disease as the plot center, the award-winners Paco Roca, Cristina Durán and Miguel Ángel Giner Bou. The conferences, held in the Aula Magna of the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, were a multicultural meeting that highlighted the relevance and potential of these strategies as part of teaching in the Medicine degree and constitute an example of the possible outcomes and feedback enrichment provided by innovation projects in the wider context of University teaching, that contributes to strengthen outreach and connection to society.

Keywords:

Graphic narrative, graphic medicine, active learning, comics, conferences.