Contact:

Davida Leayman
Allentown, PA 18101
Ph: 484-862-3067
Davida_M.Leayman@lvhn.org

This elective is designed to develop students' communication skills in physician-patient encounters through embodied learning. Under the supervision of the course director (PhD in Performance & Health Communication), students will develop skills writing, assessing, and engaging in staged interactive patient encounters with actors from the LVHN Simulation Center and local Allentown community theatre. This elective will provide students the opportunity to develop effective communication skills (e.g., empathic listening) and cultural competency in a supportive and safe learning environment.

Objectives

Collect a patient narrative and transcribe it as a short script/play to be performed by local actors.
Understand the unique physical, emotional, and cultural needs of patients by watching/audiencing local actors perform narratives collected by students from the course.
Increase cultural competency by exposing students to patient narratives from diversified cultural backgrounds.
Increase interpersonal communication skills such as effective listening and reading nonverbals by interacting with patients (when collecting narratives) and actors (when role-playing patient encounters).
Learn clinical empathy skills (e.g., empathic listening). Understand emotional biases and emotional responses in different patient encounters.
Improve verbal and nonverbal behaviors during patient encounters by engaging in staged patient performances with trained medical actors.
Evaluate staged performances to identify verbal and nonverbal changes needed to improve patient care.

The student will meet with at least one patient to collect his/her narrative. Students will participate in "practice" interactive staged performances of patient narratives to receive formative feedback from the course director and fellow classmates. Students will have an opportunity to perform in both patient and physician roles during practice encounters. At the end of the course, students will engage in a final, staged "performance" (similar to an OSCE) of their collected patient narrative with a trained, medical actor from a local institution. Students will also self-assess their encounter with the patient/actor and offer written feedback of classmates' staged encounters. Upon completion of the course, students will have an increased understanding of various communication skills used in diverse patient encounters and how to apply those skills to improve cultural competency, mutual understanding, empathy, and patient-centered care.

Evaluation

Students will be evaluated by the course director at the completion of the course based on collected and transcribed patient narratives in the form of a short "script". During the patient encounters, students will be assessed by the course director based on ACGME competencies: communication skills (e.g., listening) and how well these skills were applied during the practice encounters and final encounter. A written checklist and narrative evaluation will be used during the course as both formative feedback (practice patient encounters) and summative feedback (final, staged patient encounter). Students will also be graded on the written and verbal feedback they provide their classmates during their practice and final encounter. Grades are determined by 30% written patient narrative, 40% staged patient encounter, 15% self assessment of patient encounter, 15% feedback of classmates' patient encounters.

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