Caricatures Ireland » health

Cartoons from the Quality Improvement Academy, Cardiff.

Allan — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:48:54 +0000

Last month I was invited over to Cardiff in Wales to help document the Cardiff Centre for Health’s pilot Quality Improvement Academy. This was a three day long course, attended by health care professionals and students, of talks, case studies and role playing investigation into accidents in healthcare, and it was equal parts fascinating and terrifying. I actually learned a lot about the anatomy of needless deaths in healthcare, and like so many accidents it’s a series of systems failures and lack of proper communication that contribute to fatalities. One of the speakers, Philip Higton, is a former airline pilot who now coaches on accident avoidance. He showed a video of a colleague, also a pilot, whose wife died undergoing routine surgery because proper communication protocols were not in place. In airlines, pilots specifically tell the co-pilot what they should say if they see the captain messing something up. They give licence for the co-pilot to disregard their superior rank. No such protocol was in place in the case of this gentleman’s wife. Three consultants were involved, and all three of them went back to work. This was exactly what the pilot wanted to happen: the three consultants would never make the same mistakes again, and would disseminate the knowledge of what went wrong among their colleagues. It was raw and upsetting to watch, and had a really deep effect on the attendees.
I drew cartoons on the spot as the concepts and issues were being discussed. More of the cartoons based on the themes of the academy follow:

Galway Water Crisis- It’s Over!

Allan — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 19:26:31 +0000

Woohoo! It’s over! No more brushing my teeth with beer!

Or is it?

More Camp Claddagh Photos!

Allan — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 10:12:00 +0000

Here’s a few more pictures of me doing caricatures for Camp Claddagh, the Galway branch of the Chernobyl Children’s Project. It’s nice to see me in a photo for once! Check out their website for more information and if you can please make a donation to:

AIB Acct no 23453-032

Sort code 93-72-23

IBAN: IE43 AIBK 9372 2323 4530 32

HSE Cartoon Strip

Allan — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 08:45:00 +0000

This is the cartoon strip I used to do for the Health Service Executive’s western publication Health Links, the McSlaintes and O’Tinns. You can see more of these cartoons in the publications section of my website.

City Council to recycle water bottles for free.

Allan — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 12:37:00 +0000

From Galway Water Crisis:

FREE RECYCLING OF WATER BOTTLES WILL BE AVAILABLE IMMEDIATELY. Just put them in clear plastic bags and put them out at your normal day/time. This was announced at the 23 April meeting of the City Council in a letter to the councillors from the manager.
Here is an excerpt of the city manager’s letter:
This issue of disposing of the bottles is primarily bulk and not weight. The best advice is to squash the bottles after removing the caps. This allows a reduction in bulk in the green bin and also allows the refuse freighter to compact the bottles more efficiently.
The following measures are being put into place:
(i) Bottles which are put in clear bags will be collected with green bins as per normal collection dates. It is important that water bottles are not mixed up with other waste to facilitate recycling. Free clear bags will be made available from the Environment Department, City Hall, on request.
(ii) A container will be available in Sandy Road Depot from 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. on Saturday to facilitate this collection of plastic bottles.

Also let me give a plug to the Galway Wants Water forum, which has been set up to give Galwegians a voice in the current crisis.

Feeling thirsty?

Allan — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 19:45:00 +0000

Galway Water Crisis Protest

Allan — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 21:38:00 +0000

Following on from my last post, The Looking Glass has asked me to post on a protest that’s happening over the water fiasco:

“Protest going ahead Monday 23 April. Assemble at City Hall, College road from 6pm. Please text people about this and ask them to pass it on. Also can you copy and paste this and post it as a bulletin yourselves. Its crucial we get large numbers of people at this protest. Thanks”

See you there and bring your own water!

Catching Bird Flu on the Internet…

Allan — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 20:29:00 +0000

My earlier post on peace-keeping chickens has shown up on a bird flu aggregator. It’s an ill wind that a Google Adsense entrepeneur doesn’t make an aggregator out of to make a killing on modern paranoia. And I’ll bet that they make an avian killing on this one. It’s dripping with the paraphenalia of paranoia: face masks for your kids, supplements, and, um, DVDs. Which reminds me of a joke I just made up:
Why did the chicken cross the road?
Well it couldn’t because the road was full of people who were statistically more likely to die from road traffic accidents than bird flu.
Boom boom. Buck boock.

Smoking Ban

Allan — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 17:33:00 +0000

Thanks for visiting the blog, have a look around while you’re here!

This image is one of the most viewed on my website, for some reason. I think many people are looking for ways to stop smoking at this time of year. There are also a few countries that are on the verge of introducing smoking bans. I personally thought the smoking ban was great as I used to work frequently in nightclubs throughout the country as a stilt performer with the lads and lasses in the Grooveyard, and would spend most of Sunday trying to wheeze my way back to health only to do it all over again the next weekend. I’ve heard from a number of smokers that they’ve developed the habit of going outside for a smoke in their own homes!