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Browsing by Author "Medical Humanities, Liberal Arts"
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Item Medical Student as Playwright: Dramatizing Imelda(2022) Beckman, Emily; Larimer, Angeline; Medical Humanities, Liberal ArtsCritical engagement with fiction has the potential to prompt development of personal empathy. Playwriting can foster an even deeper understanding of patient space and motivation by challenging students with the responsibility of creating characters, bringing to light common misperceptions of societal intersections and highlighting awareness of societal complexities. The opportunity to animate characters provides students the chance to examine difficult themes within a safe space environment. For three years our medical students have been prompted to write a script inspired by Richard Selzer’s short story “Imelda” which addresses issues of access, equality, gender, race and class in an international setting, as well as ethical considerations in best practices. Students are instructed on the mechanics of scriptwriting, and are expected to write one complete scene. Students then participate in an in-class scriptwriting workshop where they are asked to assign roles to classmates and direct a staged reading for the class, after which a discussion takes place. Throughout the process, students imagine the life of another, and move beyond their own comfort zones to articulate that life in a creative and expressive way. This process is much like those which exist in the practice of medicine involving communication, active listening, close attention to nuance, collaboration and performance. This paper examines the benefits of incorporating an applied theatre playwriting workshop into medical education, specifically within a narrative medicine curriculum and included samples of text from student scripts, a larger analysis of the two-year exercise, and recommendations for future iterations.Item “You will have changed profoundly”: A letter writing exercise for 4th Year medical students(Medical Humanities Group at UCMS and GTBH, 2022-08-04) Beckman, Emily; Head, Katharine J.; Gramelspacher, Anna Maria; Medical Humanities, Liberal ArtsIntroduction: Reflective writing, an exercise where students respond to a prompt in writing and then read their writing aloud in class, is a core component of Narrative Medicine. Student writings often reveal truths about their own experiences moving through medical education, including the identity transformation they experience. Method: The purpose of this study was to ask fourth year medical students (N=15) enrolled in Narrative Medicine elective courses at two large U.S. Midwestern medical schools to reflect on their medical school experience. The students were asked to write a letter in response to the following prompt: “if you could tell your 1st day of medical school self anything, what would it be?” Results: Through thematic analysis, the authors identified three major themes in these letters, including student reflections of medical school as a journey, identity transformation and identity management within medical school, and the value of important relationships and the role they play in the medical student experience. Discussion: We conclude the paper with a discussion on what we can learn from these student letters, calling for more attention to the vulnerability of students as they progress through medical school and more research on the kinds of transformation students experience. Medical students can be vulnerable, and the system that has been created for them to develop into empathetic, skilled physicians often contributes to that vulnerability. Therefore, institutions should not only allow students to reflect and give voice to their experience, but also encourage a reimagining of certain aspects of medical education.