Medical illustration and medical education.

Abstract

I read Brown’s viewpoint with great interest, and particularly two statements: first, that ‘this profession has diversified so much over the last decade, that we are in the danger of becoming ‘‘jacks of all trades and masters of none’’’; secondly, that ‘it is too easy and tempting to take on more and more areas of work to the detriment of core skills’. On the other hand, Morton has argued that ‘the strength of medical illustration departments is the fact that they undertake such a wide variety of activities’. No doubt in medical illustration we are in a state of confusion because we have failed to define clearly and explain our role in medicine to the public at large and more particularly to clients, employers and other users of our services. For half a century our profession has been evolving but we still have not actively participated in the effective utilization of our products. We need to broaden our thinking and demonstrate the true value of our profession to medicine, rather than just produce images with the ‘wow!-factor’ to ‘surprise’ and ‘delight’ clients. We do not make a direct contribution towards the diagnostic and/or therapeutic aspects of patient care, but we do play an important role in the effective utilization of multimedia Journal of Audiovisual Media in Medicine, Vol. 26, No. 4, pp. 161–162