Application of Forum Theatre in Medical Humanities Education: Focusing on Empathy - A Pilot Study

10.6145/jme.202009_24(3).0001

Pit-Yee Voo；Ko-Huang Lue；Ming-Che Tsai；Wen-Jiuan Yen；Tsu-Ann Kuo；Hai-Lun Sun

forum theatre ； empathy ； inter-professional learning ； medical humanities

Journal of Medical Education

24卷3期（2020 / 09 / 01）

151 - 160

英文

Purpose: Empathy is considered an important element for medical and health professions students to develop. Inter-professional learning gives medical students the opportunity to learn together with students in other professions with whom they will work collaboratively in the future. Traditional teaching methods such as lecture, conferences, and open discussion have long been criticized as being ineffective. We applied forum theatre, a type of theatre that promotes audience participation and explores different options for dealing with a certain issue, to enhance the empathy level of medical and health professions students and to promote their inter-professional learning. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study to assess the empathy of medical, nursing, and social work students before and after they attended a forum theatre. We assessed empathy by using the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy Student Version (JSPE). The questionnaire includes 20 questions, each scored on a 7-point Likert scale. All students submitted reflective feedbacks at the end of the second semester. Results: A total of 76 of 86 students (88.37%) completed the JSPE questionnaire; the students' average age was 20.47 ± 2.34 years. For all participants, JSPE scores were not significantly different before and after the forum theatre (82.28 ± 6.79 vs 84.17 ± 5.55, p = 0.056). In the first-grade students, however, JSPE scores significantly increased after the forum theatre (81.94 ± 6.84 vs 84.29 ± 5.36, p = 0.036). A significant increase was also noted in the first-grade medical students (81.72 ± 7.29 vs 84.65 ± 5.12, p = 0.019). Conclusions: Forum theatre may provide an option for inter-professional learning of medical humanities to influence medical students to become more empathetic.

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