“How do you explain to your child or adolescent what their mother or father lives in headphones? It’s hard. But what if you develop community access materials with a simpler message that combines text with graphics? With that anxiety and the impulse that gives him a passion for drawing, the intensivist doctor Arturo Briva it began to develop CTI note.
The peculiarity of these notes is the prominence that the drawings must explain, in this case, how an intensive care center works. It is what is known as Graphic medicine, a movement that began in the United States a few years ago and is gaining momentum in Spain today.
“In Uruguay I know that there are many colleagues who use the graphic part, especially for teaching, but there is no group formed in this regard,” said Briva, who defines drawing as one of his vices.
This passion comes from an early age and led his parents to give him one of the famous correspondence courses that were advertised in Patoruzú or Isidoro magazines. “It was a very rustic thing, very simple and with a technical quality that is not compared to any real drawing course. But as a child it was a great gift, ”he said, admitting that he learned more by copying others.
Although today it is defined as a journal – “what I do are doodles that I and a friend like” – about three years ago he became more interested in applying drawings in graphic medicine to develop it in Uruguay. “You have to work with the language. Do not make the drawing and do not put text on it, you need to polish it. It’s not just about making a comic “, he clarified who is both a teacher and a researcher.
It started with a very simple goal: try to convey a written idea as concrete 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 the image and the text complement each other,” he explained about what he spreads through his Twitter account (@arturobriva).
It is very useful to refer to well-known characters or refer to a movie, because this attracts the recipient more, especially if it is an audience outside of medicine. “Someone likes the character, sees him drawn there and gives him a little more attention beyond the fact that he will never make a mechanical ventilation“, said.
This is another point, graphic medicine can be addressed to both professionals and the general public. Today, for example, he thinks it might be very helpful to share information about COVID-19. “Sometimes you hear about intensive care and COVID with a totally wrong vision. If I send a super technical message and I hope that message, for which 5% of Uruguay was prepared, will understand the rest, I get lost. On the other hand, a simpler message in uploading information, but not in quality, is very valuable for society in general “, he remarked.
Therefore, he strongly believes that graphic medicine can be a very powerful tool when we communicate, without replacing a text or a video, but complementing them. “Any way we have to communicate to the population we have the obligation to take advantage of it. If someone understands something essentially complex about medicine with this tool, this is an excellent goal, ”he added.
Graphic short stories
Briva said that graphic medicine also develops the idea of doing something soap operas with a certain pathology or experience as a starting point. It’s a little more complex than the intensivist imagines he might do later.
In Uruguay, the person who does something that is very close to him is neurosurgery and teacher Fernando Martinez. Brief illustrated history of neuroscience It is an initiative that he confronted his Argentine colleague Luis Domitrovic.
“Luis is a neurosurgeon and radiologist, a medical designer and extremely talented and intelligent. He won prizes for drawing and painting, ”said Martínez, 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 the windmills in this style Transformers it was their trigger to think about using the chart to inform about the history of the specialty. Thus, Martínez deals with texts. Domitrovic examines them and looks for a way to illustrate them.
They came at a good pace until they were forced to stop to deal with pandemic responsibilities.
“I did it from the beginning of history until Claudio Galen. When we have time, any of us will connect him back, “said Martinez.
Domitrovic posts on his blog (ladvic.com/blog) and Martínez disseminate their material on Twitter (@fermartneuro) and through the Uruguayan Society of Neurosurgery.
“They told me, ‘Hey, how fun it is,’ or ‘I read it with my niece because she likes drawings and it’s my way of introducing her to medicine,'” said the neurosurgeon. and therefore does not include technical language unless there is no other option.
The repercussions were very good and there are even colleagues who offered to collaborate.
From his role as a teacher, Martínez said that this is a great way to pass on knowledge, because it makes learning more enjoyable. “It amuses me to see Aristotle or Hippocrates as a caricature and not as a very circumspect gentleman who learns everything he knew. It entertains me, frees my head a lot and allows me to face work in a different way “, he told El País. But what he likes most is the income he receives, things like “I’ve never read neuroscience in my life, but I like the way he presents it.”
Neuroscience in illustrations
“Our goal is to tell you with text and drawing, the main historical events that marked the neurosciences, as well as the most notable characters and the contributions they made to the knowledge of the nervous system,” they say in their introduction to Brief illustrated history of neuroscience neurosurgeons Fernando Martinez and Luis Domitrovic, a Uruguayan and an Argentine who practices Graphic medicine.