Visual Attunement: A Longitudinal Study of Comics-Based Education in a US Medical School

This article explores the role of comics as a sustained pedagogical practice within medical education, presenting findings from a longitudinal qualitative study conducted at Penn State College of Medicine, United States. Over two pre-clinical years, a self-selected group of medical students—known as the Comics Cohort—were given comics-making assignments to integrate into their required Humanities curriculum. Through focus groups, individual interviews, and visual narrative analysis of students’ drawings, the study investigated how engaging with comics over time shaped medical students’ ways of seeing, learning, and becoming. We identified three main thematic domains: 1) students learn more deeply when they engage visually; 2) the personal reflection and vulnerability that arise from making comics can be challenging but are also tools for growth; and 3) making and sharing comics creates community and connection. Building on participants’ accounts of repeated comics-based practices, this article conceptualizes drawing as a form of reflective engagement that shapes how students attend to clinical encounters. The act of drawing—repetitive, situated, and open-ended—functioned as a reflective tool through which students developed what we conceptualize as visual attunement: an ethically engaged perceptual stance that integrates attention to bodies, silences, emotions, and context. Rather than using art as an occasional creative supplement, this study found that drawing comics can serve as both a medium and method through which students cultivate professional identity, visual thinking, and critical reflection.