Instructions for Students: As you read your selected graphic memoir, use these questions to guide your attention and reflection. You can jot down notes as you go or reflect on them after finishing. These are meant to help you engage more deeply with the text and notice important details. When you have finished your book, you have the option of including your reflections as part of Survey 2. This is completely optional.
- What are you noticing about this person’s complete story? As you read, what are you learning about this person beyond their illness or dying process? What glimpses do you get of who they were/are as a complete human being – their relationships, personality, history, daily life?
- How is the journey unfolding over time? Pay attention to how the illness, dying process, or grief affects the person and their relationships over time. What changes do you notice – not just physically, but emotionally, socially, and relationally? What aspects of the disease/illness/health system did you not know before?
- What questions and reflections are emerging for you? What questions about the full experience of illness, death, or grief are coming up as you read? What are you curious about that you might not see in a brief clinical encounter? What thoughts or feelings about your own relationship with death, loss, or the limits of healthcare are surfacing as you engage with this story?
- Connections to your future nursing practice: As you read, what moments or insights make you think about your role as a future nurse? How might what you’re learning about this person’s experience influence how you approach patient and/or family care?
- Reflect on positionality. How do factors such as race/gender/socioeconomic status/ religion/sexuality/family structure shape the characters’ experiences? Reflect on how experiences might differ for people belonging to other demographic groups. What challenges might they face, and how could you – as health care provider – support and advocate for quality care?
- Reflect on learning with graphic memoirs. How does the graphic novel format impact your engagement with the story? With the characters’ journey? What does the graphic novel format offer that other ways of learning about death do not (if anything)?
- Any additional comments or thoughts about the experience?
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