A Building Block of Empathy: Establishing a Graphic Medicine Collection in an Academic Health Sciences Library

Abstract

To help address the well-being of the campus and contribute to empathy building amongst students pursuing careers as healthcare providers, an academic health sciences library built a graphic novel collection focused on comics that discuss medical conditions and health-related topics. The collection contains the experiences of patients, providers, and caregivers. The reader-friendly format of graphic novels provides an easy entry point for discussing empathy with health professions faculty and students. The collection has been used in the classroom during library instruction sessions, with the idea of integrating it within the curriculum.

Keywords:

• Comics
• empathy
• graphic medicine
• graphic novels
• wellness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Jess D. King

Jess D. King, MLIS ([email protected]) is an Education and Research Services Librarian at McGoogan Health Sciences Library, University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska, USA.

Alison M. Bobal

Alison M. Bobal, MA, MSI ([email protected]) is Head of Collection Development and Metadata at McGoogan Health Sciences Library, University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska, USA.