Syracuse University improv class, dramatic scenes teach communication skills
Syracuse University professor Stephen Cross works with first-year medical resident Dipti Baral, MD during a class this fall at Syracuse Stage.
The exercise is just the start of a 90-minute improvisational workshop and part of a larger mission. “What I tell my students is, they have to become comfortable with being present, with seeing people and with people seeing them,” Cross says. In a classroom or on a stage, he tells them, “they have to learn to own that space. They have to learn to be comfortable in that space, like they are comfortable in their own home.”
Usually, his students are preparing for a life on the stage or screen. But on this morning, his students are resident doctors from neighboring Upstate Medical University, participating in a workshop called “Education Through Theater Arts.”
The acting workshop is one way Upstate teaches communication skills and professionalism, two of the core competencies of medical education at the undergraduate and graduate level, says Upstate‘s Stephen Knohl, MD, an associate professor of medicine and the residency program director. He approached Cross, who established the workshop in 2012.
Already underway was a program Knohl created in 2008 called “Learning to TALK (Treat All Like Kin).” Through TALK, the residents at Upstate University Hospital put their communication skills to the test in a series of scenarios. Professors observe the resident doctors through videocameras as they interact with actors playing the role of patients. The scenarios – all based on real events that happened in Syracuse -- require the residents to make an apology, deliver unpleasant news and deal with difficult patients or colleagues.
Afterward, “the actor provides immediate feedback on how they felt during the encounter. It‘s not about diagnostic accuracy. It‘s about how did you make me feel,” Knohl says. Then as a group, the residents discuss the issues raised in each scenario.
Both of these programs borrow from the stage, and Cross says that makes sense. “We in the theater are challenged to feel more, see more, hear more.” The best doctors develop those traits.
Sonja Gill, MD, a resident in her third year, says the SU workshop “helped to humble us once more into realizing that we are all human and have the same insecurities and shortcomings as our patients. When we were put into uncomfortable ‘improv‘ situations, that made us realize how patients may feel when placed outside of their comfort zones.”
Her classmate, Colin Hardin, MD believes “the biggest thing we gained was to be more aware of how we occupy space. Being aware of where my gaze is, what my body movements are doing -- This was something I didn‘t really think of before.”
Such seemingly small details are important for doctors to absorb, for the crux of the doctor-patient relationship is communication.
Hear an interview about the TALK program with Stephen Knohl, MD
Hear from residents who completed TALK.