‘Content free’ training
‘Content free’ training https://medicalimprovgb.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/AdobeStock_122167451-1024x683.jpeg 1024 683 Esther Waterhouse https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/1c7b281787878ae4f0c33c7c9a5a44d7b8d548954b9343a55c410203089eabfb?s=96&d=mm&r=gMost communication skills training for health care professionals is framed around scenarios that
the participants would be expected to meet in their professional lives. This often takes the form
of role plays – some scripted, some set up on the day, based on situations that delegates have
said they find difficult – ‘breaking bad news’ or ‘dealing with a crying patient’.
When we deliver medical improv sessions, we take the content out. So our exercises have, on
the surface, no direct relevance to healthcare. Planning a picnic or a holiday, or mirroring your
partner’s movements, or creating new proverbs one word at a time, can seem to have no
relevance at all. Yet delegates consistently tell us that the training was highly applicable to their
daily work, highly transferable and very useful. So what is going on?
I think three things happen. Firstly, people have fun! They relish doing things so far away from
their normal work, so they laugh and they engage with the exercises. Secondly, the impact of
behaviour and language is amplified by the exercises when we focus on the communication
aspects rather than the medical ones. Thirdly, people ‘feel’ the impact of the behaviours that we
focus on, rather than being ‘told’ the impact of them.
In the reflective debriefs that are programmed into the day, we often get comments such as ‘I
understand how it feels to be really listened to’ and ‘I can feel the difference in communication
when my body language changes’. For me, this is the real delight of Medical Improv. – seeing people learning whilst having fun.
