Bones, sweat, and tears: Creating comics to explore student experiences in dissection

Human dissection is an impactful and formative experience in medical training, during which students experience a variety of emotions. Recently, there has been growing interest in providing opportunities through the humanities to reflect on dissection. The field of "graphic medicine," which combines comics with health discourse, proposes comic art as an effective way to share stories and process high-impact moments in health and education. Hypothesizing that graphic medicine would be useful for exploring dissection experiences, we hosted a voluntary reflection event for graduate students in anatomy that culminated in attendees producing a 3-panel comic to share their best, worst, and/or most memorable moment in anatomy. Student feedback was collected using a Likert-format survey tool. Comics were analyzed via quantitative analysis for the frequency of visual variables-including setting, bodily region of dissection, and facial expressions-and qualitative analysis for over-arching themes. In two annual workshops, 30 students participated, submitting 25 comics for review. Students rated the event favorably and depicted a spectrum of emotions, including excitement, curiosity, fear, isolation, camaraderie, and shock. Common features included bone saws, accidental tissue exposure, perceived educational pressure, and tears. Dominant themes included discovery and distress, humanization and detachment, and humor and seriousness. Our study highlights the potential utility of graphic reflection events as another form of humanistic reflection which may be useful in allowing students to share their experiences in dissection.