Improv: Transforming Physicians and Medicine
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COMMENTARY
Improv: Transforming Physicians and Medicine Ankit Mehta 1,2 & Belinda Fu 3,4,5 & Erica Chou 6 & Suzanne Mitchell 7 & David Fessell 8 Accepted: 20 November 2020 # International Association of Medical Science Educators 2020
Introduction Human connection is central to the practice of medicine. Interpersonal communication, collaboration, and adaptability are critical skills for a medical professional. This is the hidden curriculum in the medical education. Medical improv is an exciting new training approach and can help address this important aspect of medical education. Medical improv is the adaptation of improvisational theater principles and exercises to enhance skills including communication, teamwork, and cognition [1]. Medical improv training teaches powerful tools that can enable providers to more easily and deeply connect with patients. These tools include attentive listening, observation, emotional presence, empathy, collaboration, and respect for multiple viewpoints [1–5]. Another strength of medical improv is its potential to increase clinicians’ comfort level and skills with uncertainty, ambiguity, and surprise which are ubiquitous in medical practice [3–5]. The tenets of improv (e.g., be fully present, authentically vulnerable, willing to take risks, and play as part of a team) turn out to be some of the prime ingredients of growing into wholeness as a human being. Clinicians around the world are learning medical improv because of its potential to transform lives through the cultivation of essential skills and values [3–5]. * Ankit Mehta [email protected] 1
Internal Medicine, HealthPartners, St. Paul, MN, USA
2
Minneapolis, USA
3
Mayutica Institute, Seattle, WA, USA
4
Family Medicine, Swedish Family Medicine Residency – First Hill, Seattle, WA, USA
5
University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
6
Pediatrics, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, USA
7
Family Medicine/Palliative Care, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA
8
Radiology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Each report below is a first-hand account of the transformational power of improv, written by physicians practicing internal medicine, pediatrics, family medicine, palliative care, and radiology in cities across the country.
Improv Magic Picture a newly minted academic faculty, profoundly anxious to give a resident teaching conference. He practices in the empty conference room the night before. When teaching the next day, his eye contact is primarily with the “eye” of the slide projector. A colleague offers penetratingly accurate feedback—his awkwardness and anxiety definitely show. It’s not just a private torture [6]. This was me, and it seems like a lifetime ago. At the urging of a friend, I tried an 8-week improv course. Almost instantly I knew this was the medicine I needed. The 8-week course stretched into another and another … and before long it was two years and the entire Second City Detroit conservatory program. Along the way I discovered a growing confidence and comfor
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