Medical Director of Inpatient Psychiatry Harlem Hospital Center Bronx, New York, United States
Overview: Graphic Medicine is a narrative genre that uses comics in the discourse of healthcare[1]. Through the partnership of words and imagery, complex ideas can be quickly and easily digested. As such, graphic medicine is a medium ideally suited to the education of both the public and professionals[2]. Understanding that appraisal of decisional capacity assessment education in psychiatry training is low, we introduce Psychographica to establish a didactic category of psychiatric graphic medicine and create an inaugural example focused on decisional capacity[3].
Methods: Free copies of the inaugural volume of The C-L Psychiatrist: Decisional Capacity were distributed to the 27 residents at the Harlem Psychiatry Residency program. After which, a three question Likert scale questionnaire was distributed with a space for comments.
Results: A total of 19 responses were collected from the survey. A majority of respondents strongly agreed they learned something, that Psychographica is an effective teaching tool, and that Psychographica is equally effective as traditional teaching methods (66.7%, 73.7% and 63.2% respectively).
Conclusion: Psychographica and its inaugural volume The C-L Psychiatrist: Decisional Capacity is a promising medium for teaching concepts within psychiatry. Further works of Psychographica may prove to be valuable tools for enhancing psychiatric knowledge.
References: [1] Czerwiec M, Williams I, Squier SM, Green MJ, Myers KR, Smith ST. Graphic Medicine Manifesto. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press; 2015. [2] Williams ICM Graphic medicine: comics as medical narrative Medical Humanities 2012;38:21-27 [3] Seyfried L, Ryan KA, Kim SY. Assessment of decision-making capacity: views and experiences of consultation psychiatrists. Psychosomatics. 2013 Mar-Apr;54(2):115-23. doi:10.1016/j.psym.2012.08.001. Epub 2012 Nov 27. PMID: 23194935.
