Responding to Racism in the Clinical Setting: A Novel Use of Forum Theatre in Social Medicine Education
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Responding to Racism in the Clinical Setting: A Novel Use of Forum Theatre in Social Medicine Education Joel Manzi 1 & Sharon Casapulla 2 & Katherine Kropf 3 & Brandi Baker 4 & Merri Biechler 5 & Tiandra Finch 1 & Alyssa Gerth 1 & Christina Randolph 1 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract
Issues of race have traditionally been addressed in medical school curricula in a didactic manner. However, medical school curricula often lack adequate opportunity for the application of learning material relating to race and culture. When confronted with acts of racism in clinical settings, students are left unprepared to respond appropriately and effectively. Forum Theatre offers a dynamic platform by which participants are empowered to actively engage with and become part of the performance. When used in an educational context, Forum Theatre can be a powerful tool for students to interact with a wide variety of social issues. This paper describes the process by which one medical school designed a workshop in the Forum Theatre style to equip students to respond to racism observed in clinical settings. Based on real student experiences, the Responding to Racism in the Clinical Setting workshop was designed to give students an opportunity to combine cultural humility, communication theory and conflict resolution skills in order to prepare for interactions in clinical stages of medical education. As a result of workshop evaluations, surveys, and written reflections, the authors propose that Forum Theatre is a novel teaching modality for incorporating issues of race and culture into medical curriculum. Keywords Medical education . Racism . Forum Theatre . Social medicine . Clinical education
Historical overview of cultural training in medical education Until only recently, race has been taught in medical schools as a biologic construct. The idea of cultural competency began to appear in the academic literature in the mid-1980s. In this model, medical providers were trained to acknowledge differences in patients’ ethnic or cultural backgrounds as a means of improving physician-patient communication (Metzl, Petty, and Olowojoba 2018). The communication-centered model of cultural competency focused on * Joel Manzi [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
Journal of Medical Humanities
developing a widely accepted language script including introductory vocabulary terms that could be used to improve the efficiency of an office visit (Tervalon and Murray-García 1998). The script was based on identification of specific cultural factors that would then prompt the physician to tailor the interview to the patient’s designated identity. Many of these cultural factors were based on cultural stereotypes and resulted in a false sense of confidence in the mastery of a cultural content area (Hunt and de Voogd 2005; Fisher-Borne, Cain, and Martin 2015). In the late 1990’s, medical educators began discussing the “critical distinction” between cultural compete
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