Faire face, nursing staff VS COVID-19
Hospital emergency
At the beginning of April 2020, a fortnight after the total lockdown began, we received an e-mail from Mathilde Puges, an infectious disease specialist at Bordeaux University Hospital. She offered an unexpected project: to try and capture in comics what was happening at that moment in the life of her hospital.
In this hospital, as in many others in France, the state of health emergency led the departments concerned by COVID-19 to invent new responses and adapt, without clear national instructions, additional budgets or experience of this kind of crisis. The result of this adaptive emergency was spectacular. In just a few weeks, the entire staff was involved in creating new response tools: a telephone reception platform was set up to answer questions from healthcare professionals and then from the public, mobile teams were set up to carry out mass screenings in nursing homes, and so on.
Swinging into action
The rallying is widespread, from department heads to medical students, including temporary nurses, emergency physicians and retired doctors returning to work. Many are volunteers.
But at the hospital, it's clear that the media's coverage of the crisis, which focuses overwhelmingly on the daily toll of deaths and the heroic side of being a carer, is struggling to convey to the public what is really at work in a healthcare system that was already in dire straits before the COVID-19 crisis broke. Hence, the idea of another approach, in the form of a comic strip. That's what we know how to do at The Ink Link: use comic strip fiction to convey reality.
Listening & telling
Over the following weeks, from the beginning of April to the end of May, some members of The Ink Link organized video-meetings with twenty carers or so, from various departments at Bordeaux University Hospital. We listened to their accounts to transcribe, through ten fictional stories, their struggles, their hopes, their doubts, their analyses and their concerns.
The artists involved in the project were also able to attend the interviews and sketch their emotions from life. By introducing all those involved in the project (scriptwriter, cartoonist, project manager), we were able to establish a horizontal relationship with the carers, building trust and demonstrating our involvement and the value of what they had to say.
In the end, ten short four-page stories paint a poignant sociological picture, a record produced in a hurry. In the great tradition of the public hospital, this project is also a way of paying tribute to carers in a way other than by applauding them at the window every evening at 8pm.
Passing on knowledge
Faire face allows us to hear the anonymous voices of people who have so much to say, but who, out of professional conscience, out of love for their profession and their country, and also out of modesty, often keep silent about their anger, their disgust, their sorrow, their sense of injustice, their weariness, until sometimes the day they resign. The use of humor and metaphor allowed us to convey the complex feelings of the caregivers and to bring the public into the opaque world of the hospital, showing what really goes on beyond the waiting rooms and admission forms.
As far as the condition of hospitals is concerned, we were building a tool to make sure that we don't forget, to show that the Government continues to ask a lot and, on the other side of the coin, these highly involved professionals (and in particular the interns, who we hear so little from, but who are often on the front line) and driven by a very high opinion of what a public service should be. Today, the beginning of this exceptional crisis already seems so long ago, and that's why the duty to remember is essential, so that the bad decisions, the suffering, the doubts, but also the unprecedented initiatives, dedication and solidarity that prevailed at the time fuel the debate on tomorrow's hospital.
For the nurses interviewed, but also for all the other nurses who would recognize part of their experience, we wanted this book to really speak to them and free their words, so that they could hand it to their family or friends and say: "Here, read this, and you'll understand what I went through during that period when I didn't tell you much about my days, to spare you the doubts, the suffering, the fatigue...".
In bookshops in April 2021
Thanks to the success of the crowdfunding campaign (420%, thank you!) and the support of the Bordeaux hospital patronage, on April 20, 2021, one year after the adventure began, the album Faire face : soignants vs COVID-19 will be released in bookstores.
The ten short stories have been enriched with documentary resources on the crisis as experienced from the hospital, biographies of the caregivers interviewed, a graphic booklet with sketches and previously unpublished elements. 80 pages in all, softcover with flaps.
Here's a list of bookshops where you can buy the comic book.
If you are a bookseller and would like to place an order, please write to us.
INFOS:
- 80 color pages
- 220 x 290, paperback with flaps
- Retail price: €17
- ISBN : 978-2-9575439-0-8
- 11 - Librairie BD & cie, Narbonne
- 12 - La Maison du livre, Rodez
- 13 - L'Antre du Snorgleux, Marseille
- 19 - Bulles de papier, Brive
- 21 - Momie, Dijon
- 31 - Terres de Légendes, Toulouse
- 32 - Le Cochon bleu, Lectoure
- 33 - Mollat, Bordeaux
- 33 - Krazy Kat, Bordeaux
- 33 - La Machine à lire, Bordeaux
- 33 - Librairie des Chartrons, Bordeaux
- 33 - Le Pavé dans la marge, Mérignac
- 33 - L'Embellie, Lacanau océan
- 33 - L'Exquise librairie, Saint-André-de-Cubzac
- 35 - Le Failler, Rennes
- 35 - Momie, Saint-Malo
- 38 - Momie, Grenoble
- 40 - Bulles d'encres, Mont-de-Marsan
- 57 - Momie, Metz
- 44 - Coiffard, Nantes
- 59 - Au temps lire, Lambersart
- 63 - Momie, Clermont-Ferrant
- 64 - L'Escapade, Oloron-Sainte-Marie
- 64 - Bachibouzouk, Pau
- 64 - L'Escampette, Pau
- 64 - Tonnet, Pau
- 64 - Le Parvis Espace Culturel, Pau
- 68 - Tribulles, Mulhouse
- 69 - La BD, Lyon
- 69 - Expérience, Lyon
- 69 - Momie, Lyon
- 71 - L'Antre des bulles, Châlon-sur-Saône
- 72 - Bulle, Le Mans
- 73 - Momie, Chambéry
- 74 - BD Fugue, Annecy
- 74 - Momie, Annecy
- 88 - L'Octopus, Epinal
- 92 - La Case à Bulles, Asnières-sur-Seine
- 92 - Le Bonheur, Montrouge
- Belgium : Librairie Flagey, Ixelles
- Online : Momie.fr et BD fugue
An exhibition
The exhibition completes the comic books with photographs from the field, interviews with caregivers and a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the plates and the story.
It also addresses the question of the chosen methodology and the interest of comics in a context of duty to remember in the midst of a health crisis.
The exhibition is available in two versions:
- a short version with 8 panels, 85cm wide and 2m high;
- a long version of 13 panels, with the 8 informative panels + 5 panels of comic strip pages, allowing visitors to immerse themselves in the hospital atmosphere during the first wave of COVID-19.
Available for your premises, please write to us.