“How do you explain to a child or adolescent what their mother or father is going through in the CTI? It is difficult. But what happens if you develop community access materials with a simpler message that combines text and images? ”. With that unrest and with the impulse that gives him his passion for drawing, the intensivist doctor Arturo briva began to develop Notes from the CTI.
The special thing about these notes is the prominence that the drawings have in explaining, in this case, how an Intensive Care Center works. It is what is known as Graphic Medicine, a movement that started a few years ago in the United States and is gaining momentum in Spain today.
“In Uruguay I know there are many colleagues who use the graphics part, especially to teach, but no group has been formed in this regard,” said Briva, describing drawing as one of his vices.
That passion comes from an early age and led his parents to teach him one of the famous correspondence courses advertised in the magazines Patoruzú or Isidoro. “It was something very rustic, very simple and with a technical quality that cannot be compared to a real drawing course. But as a child it was a super gift, ”he said, confessing that he learned more by copying others.
Although it is today defined as a log – “what I do are scribbles that me and a friend like” – about three years ago he became more interested in the application of drawings in graphic medicine to develop it in Uruguay. “You have to work with the language. It’s not drawing and putting text on it, you have to polish it. It’s not just making a comic, ”clarified who also is a teacher and researcher.
It started with a very simple goal: try to convey a written idea as concretely as possible and reinforce it with images. “Sometimes the drawing says exactly the same as the text or tries to find its way, so that image and text complement each other,” he explained what he disseminates via his Twitter account (@arturobriva).
It helps a lot to address famous characters or to refer to a movie because that is more appealing to the recipient, especially if it is an audience outside of medicine. “Someone likes the character, sees him drawn there, and pays a little more attention to him, aside from never having a mechanical ventilationsaid.
That’s another point, graphic medicine can target professionals as well as the general public. For example, today he believes that it can be very useful to get information about the COVID-19. “Sometimes you hear about intensive medicine and COVID with a completely wrong vision. If I send a super technical message and I hope that message, which 5% of Uruguay was prepared for, will understand the rest, then I digress. On the other hand, a simpler message in the information load but not in terms of quality is very valuable for society in general, ”he notes.
That is why he is firmly convinced that graphic medicine can be a very powerful tool for communication, without replacing a text or a video, but rather supplementing it. “Any way we have to communicate with the population has a duty to benefit from it. When someone understands something fundamentally complicated about medicine with this tool, that’s a great goal, ”he added.
Graphic novels
Briva said graphic medicine is also developing the idea of creating a species soap operas with some pathology or experience as a starting point. It’s a bit more complicated than the intensivist thinks he could do later.
In Uruguay, the person who does something very close to him is the neurosurgeon and teacher Fernando Martinez. Brief Illustrated History of Neuroscience It is an initiative that he faced his Argentinian colleague Luis Domitrovic.
Luis is a neurosurgeon and radiologist, a medical cartoonist and immensely talented and intelligent. He has won awards for drawing and painting, ”says Martínez of his partner, who lives in Spain and with whom he started making cartoons with non-medical texts years ago.
A cartoon in which Don Quixote and Sancho Panza fought against windmills in style Transformers it prompted them to appeal to the image to inquire about the history of the specialty. So Martínez is in charge of the lyrics. Domitrovic examines them and looks for a way to illustrate them.
They came at a good pace until they were forced to stop to take on the responsibilities related to the pandemic.
“We’ve done it from the beginning of history to Claudio Galen. When we have time, we’ll both plug it back in, ”said Martínez.
Domitrovic publica and su blog (ladvic.com/blog) and Martínez spreads his material on his Twitter (@fermartneuro) and through the Uruguayan Society of Neurosurgery.
‘They told me’ hey how good that is, it’s entertaining ‘or’ I read it with my granddaughter because she likes drawings and it’s my way of introducing her to medicine, ‘said the neurosurgeon on the consequences of an initiative aimed at the general public and therefore does not include technical language unless there is no other option.
The repercussions were very good and some colleagues even offered to work together.
From his role as a teacher, Martínez evaluated that this is a very good way to transfer knowledge because it makes learning more fun. ‘It amuses me to see Aristotle or Hippocrates as a caricature and not as a very observant gentleman learning everything he knew. It entertains me, clears my mind a lot and allows me to see my work in a different way, ”he told El País. But what he likes best is the proceeds he receives, things like “I’ve never read neuroscience in my life, but I like the way they present it.”
Neuroscience in Illustrations
“Our aim is to tell you with text and drawings the most important historical events that characterized neuroscience, as well as the most outstanding characters and the contributions they made to the knowledge of the nervous system,” they say in their introduction. Brief Illustrated History of Neuroscience neurosurgeons Fernando Martinez and Luis Domitrovic, a Uruguayan and an Argentinian who practice Graphic medicine.