Kelly Leonard, executive director of insights and applied improvisation at Second City Works, relates how improvisation can help clinicians build relationships with patients and improve their outcomes.
The clinician/healer must both address the disease and seek to know how the medical condition is being experienced by the patient—what impact it has on his or her life and spirit.
The Culture, Narrative, and Medicine course at Loyola University of Chicago's Stritch School of Medicine teaches cultural humility through literature and students' reflective writing.
Physicians should be aware of the level of emotional distress and suffering that a patient is experiencing as a result of his or her illness and incorporate that into the patient's treatment plan.
Physicians should demonstrate compassion when the parent of an ill child asks the physician for his or her personal opinion regarding the parents' choice to continue experimental treatment when the prognosis is not good.