Doctors gain insight from theater training

Virginia residents learn to read body language to give patients better care.

By Myrle Croasdale, AMNews staff. Dec. 3, 2007.

What can an actor teach a physician? A lot, according to a team of physicians and theater professors at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.

A flick of a hand. A clenched jaw. The body communicates more than words, but are physicians listening? Not if they are glued to a computer reading an electronic medical record or flipping through a paper chart.

The art of effective communication, considered a key attribute of a good physician, is one aspect of medical training that often is not dealt with explicitly, said Alan Dow, MD, associate internal medicine residency director at the VCU Medical Center.

This is why this seemingly disparate group of individuals have joined forces. The theater professors, armed with their understanding of verbal and nonverbal communication, are collaborating with VCU Medical Center physicians to turn medical residents into effective communicators able to build trust with patients and get to the heart of patients' clinical concerns.

Pilot program results in the August Journal of General Internal Medicine show that the class seems to have made a difference in physician-patient communication. Trained observers rated residents' overall empathetic communication 6.88 on a 10-point scale before the class and 8.56 four months later. That compares with a control group where the rating slipped from 6.38 to 5.82 in the same time frame.

"Communication skills are important, but we've forgotten how to teach them," said study co-author Dr. Dow. "It's an area we don't know much about."