Elective subject Graphic Medicine and Psychiatry
Project management: Prof. Dr. Bettina Hitzer, Head of the Department of History, Theory and Ethics of Medicine at Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, and Dr. Lea Münch, PhD, Department of History, Theory and Ethics of Medicine at Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg
The elective subject "Graphic Medicine and Psychiatry" aims to expand medical training and patient care to include the element of narrative medicine. It aims to sensitize students to the issues of stigmatization and discrimination against people with psychiatric experience in healthcare. By using graphic novels as a medium, students should gain a new approach to psychiatric illnesses. Graphic novels are novels or longer stories that are presented in a comic format. The images in the graphic novels are not just illustrations, but an essential part of the narrative. They provide an empathetic insight into the experiences of patients and broaden understanding of the individual experience of illness. The elective offers the space for a reflective examination of the students' own attitudes and promotes their empathy.
The practical implementation of the elective includes discussions with patients with borderline patterns, guided workshops to develop their own graphic novels and cooperation with artistic disciplines to visually design the stories. Relevant learning objectives of the National Competence-Based Learning Objectives Catalogue for Medicine (NKLM) are covered, particularly in the areas of patient-centered healthcare, medical interviewing and diversity-sensitive professional action.
The project is continuously evaluated in order to ensure the learning success of the students and the quality of the methodological and didactic implementation.By integrating the results into the VIPER teaching platform, the elective will be made accessible to other students in the long term and can serve as a model for other courses.
Other project participants: Dominik Albrecht, University Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy
Photo (from left):Dr. Lea Münch and Prof. Dr. Bettina Hitzer. Photo:private