Journal study: Between science and art

I have read an academic essay written by Megan McSherry titled Between Science and Art: Representing Cancer in Paediatric Oncology. The paper centres around her project which researched the use of images between physicians and patients to explain the various forms of cancer, treatments and procedures. The aim was to create a picture book that could be used as a tool to aid physicians in explaining cancer in a way more beneficial to those who learn visually. The book could also be used by parents to help in enabling them to discuss the issues of their child's disease in an unobtrusive manner. The paper highlights several considerations that must be taken into account when dealing with such difficult topics. How children understand and what adults belief they are capable of understanding is discussed, how the images can really reflect upon the subject matter are just a few. Issues such as the physicians being portrait in more casual clothes than the usual white lab coat to break down the barriers between patient and physicians, also no desks or furniture between both to build upon that togetherness. The book uses several characters to allow for variants of types and issues relating to cancer to be explored. This also allowed for a broader scope of diversity within character types, ethnicity etc which creates more inclusiveness to a larger group of readers. The book does not offer a fairy tale happy ending as many children's books do, instead it shows hope with remission but no one is 'cured', other characters may appear then just as quickly disappear opening up questions as to what might have happened to them. This paper was a very interesting read and has opened my eyes on how others are trying to use the picture book format to tackle difficult subjects. Using this type of research will help to broaden my own particular views and will hopefully allow me to think more divergently as I progress through this project and further into the future if I retain the same approach in other works. Some exerts from this essay are shown below.