Prof. Jenell Johnson created the Graphic Pathography Assignment for her Communication Arts 317: Rhetoric & Health class. A pathography is a narrative about a person’s experience with illness or with medical care. In recent years, graphic pathographies have become popular in medical education for their capacity to allow health care providers to see things from the patient and/or family’s point of view, or to communicate elements of the health profession that are difficult to represent with just words. The graphic pathography assignment has one major objective: to effectively communicate a story about an experience with health, illness, or medicine that illustrates some kind of lesson about health, illness, or medicine—either your own experience or someone else’s.
