Picture (im)perfect: comics in narrative medicine

This article examines how composing and interpreting comics in a narrative medicine classroom can improve medical students' capacity to tolerate uncertainty. The study, conducted in The Ohio State University course From Page to Bedside: Literature for Physicians, invited students to read Julia Wertz's <i>Impossible People: A Completely Average Recovery Story</i> and then respond in both written and comic form. Twenty-four medical students participated. Their written and visual responses were analysed qualitatively for patterns in affective engagement, self-reflection and interpretive openness. Students reported that comics released them from perfectionist tendencies and invited experimentation that was not possible in their other coursework. While the findings are limited in scope, the study suggests that comics complement narrative medicine's goal of helping practitioners recognise the partiality and contingency of clinical understanding to see their picture of a patient is a picture forever incomplete.