Giving each other gifts

• July 19, 2025
• Esther Waterhouse

I have been thinking about the value of gifts – of how lovely it is to give and receive gifts from family and friends, the connection, meaning and validation that we get from it.  And that got me thinking about one of my favourite Medical Improv exercises, where we give and receive imaginary gifts.

In pairs, we take it in turns to give and receive gifts.  The giver makes a choice about size, weight and value of the gift (shown in mime and by their body language), and the receiver names the gift based on what they see.  The giver then justifies the gift with a sentence or two explaining why they chose what they did.  So, the giver might mime a tiny, precious, delicate gift; the receiver might take it and say ‘thank you for my gold leaf’ and the giver might then say ‘i know that you are about to start a new illuminated manuscript, I thought this would be helpful’.  The fun comes from the mismatch between what the receiver says the gift is, and what the giver had intended.  So in the example above, the giver may have thought they were giving a baby mouse. Or a newly discovered insect species.  Or a tiny and difficult to hold canape.  You get the idea.  Whenever we run this exercise we get a lot of laughter!

So there’s lots of fun.  What is the learning?  When we ask what people take from this, we get lots of different answers.  ‘You need to listen’, ‘you can’t prepare for how the conversation will go’, ‘people don’t always get what you mean’.  We talk about working collaboratively and accepting what the other person has done or said, about sharing the development of the gift and how this relates to shared decision making with patients and families.  And we talk about how nice it is to give, and receive, gifts.

Come and join a study day, or commission some training, and enjoy this exercise yourselves!