Teaching Interpersonal Communication Competence to Medical Students through Theatre in Education

Effective communication skills are considered essential to a physician's professional competence. Thus, Finnish medical schools include communication skills training in their curricula. Today it is essential to ensure that students graduate with the interpersonal communication competence (ICC) necessary to succeed in their profession. Experiential methods have been shown to be more effective in teaching communication skills in medicine than lecture methods. Role-play simulations are the most common strategies. This article describes an experiential learning method, Theatre in Education (TIE), which goes beyond role-play simulations to emphasize extended active group work. TIE, which originated in Britain in the 1960s, connects theatre techniques to education. The idea is to use a short play performed by a theatre group as a stimulus to engage students with the material. The aims, content, activities, and drama conventions are designed collaboratively by the teacher(s) and the theatre group. The learning potential of drama education lies in the concept of aesthetic doubling, which means that the fictive time, space, and characters are present at the same time as the real time, space, and "me." Thus, issues can be explored through this doubleness. A list of references and suggested readings is included.