Children have a right to be informed about and participate in decisions about their health and treatments. The Radiography team at the Great North Children’s Hospital identified a need to make their MRI scan information for children more accessible, with a focus on the process of having a scan rather than the technology involved. Here is the comic that evolved from that collaboration.
Project team:
- Claire Watson and Hannah McDonald – Radiographers, Great North Children’s Hospital
- Julie Anderson – Research and Innovations Manager, Great North Children’s Hospital
- Lydia Wysocki – Education, Communication and Language Sciences, Newcastle University; Applied Comics Etc
- Janice McLaughlin – Sociology, Newcastle University
- Heather Wilson – Comic Developer, HeatherWilson Illustrations
Read more about this project:
- blog post by Janice McLaughlin and Lydia Wysocki, ‘The stop-start of collaboration in clinical settings’, on the Cost of Living medical sociology blog 29th April 2020 https://www.cost-ofliving.net/the-stop-start-of-applied-interdisciplinary-social-science-and-healthcare-collaboration-in-clinical-setting/
- slides from our presentation at the British Sociological Association’s Medical Sociology Conference (Glasgow Caledonian University, 12-14 September 2018). medsoc presentation 11th sept 2018
- the GNCH Young Person’s Advisory Group gave feedback at the very early stages of our project, and again when we presented a poster at YPAG’s conference. Read a PDF of our poster here.
This is our second project with comics creator Heather Wilson – you might remember her work from ‘Heartland’ in Asteroid Belter: The Newcastle Science Comic (2013). In My MRI, Heather’s skill in layering photographic images from the GNCH’s MRI scanner with colourful drawn elements helps connect the comic with the process of having an MRI scan. The three stories woven through the comic capture the variety of experiences and family backgrounds of young patients, and include plenty of space for children to add their own self-portrait and information to the comic.
Heather and Janice’s own previous collaborations include The Body Matters and Balancing your Studies. We are not responsible for the content of these external links, but they’re likely to be of interest to medical sociology and comics fans.
The next stage of our My MRI! project will involve feedback from young patients’ families. For this first stage of the project we gratefully acknowledge Impact Funding from Sociology at Newcastle University, and the goodwill of all project collaborators.
