Theatre: An innovative teaching tool integrated into core undergraduate medical curriculum

Abstract

Background: Ed's Story: The Dragon Chronicles is a verbatim play based on the journal of a 16-year-old with advanced cancer and transcripts from 25 interviews conducted after his death with his family, friends and health care team. After cross-country performances directed at health professionals and the general public, a viewing was incorporated into core undergraduate medical curriculum at our institution. We collected and compared responses of trainees who viewed the play voluntarily in extra-curricular settings and those who viewed a mandatory curriculum performance. Methods: Trainees completed confidential, online surveys within one year of viewing. A total of 46 trainees from five Canadian medical schools completed surveys after voluntary extra-curricular viewings (60.9% female, 39.1% male, mean age 26.2 ± 3.2 years). Of 84 eligible second-year medical students, 60 students completed surveys after mandatory curricular viewing (68.3% female, 31.7% male, mean age 26.0 ± 2.9 years, response rate 71.4%). Results: In both cohorts, a majority of trainees agreed that the play was a good learning experience (84.8%, 93.3%), should be experienced by all medical students (75.5%, 84.5%) and taught lessons they will use in their careers (71.1%, 84.7%). Trainees highlighted the play's realism, the insight gained into patient experiences and that they preferred the play to other teaching modalities. A greater percentage of trainees in the mandatory curriculum cohort agreed that a viewing should be incorporated into medical curriculum (86.7% vs. 45.3%, χ² = 20.3, p <  0.001). Conclusions: Medical trainees responded positively to this verbatim play in both extra-curricular and curricular settings.

Keywords::

• theatre
• innovation
• medical education
• medical students
• empathy

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge Ed for leaving his journal for others to learn from, and the generosity of Ed's family, friends and health care professionals who shared their stories with the research team.