‘Don’t talk like that: It’s not just what you say but how you say it’: The process of developing an applied theatre performance to teach undergraduate nursing students communication skills around paediatric end-of-life care

Abstract

Don't talk like that: It's not just what you say but how you say it': The process of developing an Applied Theatre performance to teach undergraduate nursing students communication skills around paediatric end-of-life care Abstract The project aimed to explore the effectiveness of drama and nursing students working collaboratively to develop communication skills based on situations nurses face working with children in palliative and end-of-life care. Interactive theatre techniques were developed in the participatory performance and embedded in Noddings' concept of care education. Based on findings from pre and post intervention student feedback the results demonstrate and exemplify how performance can offer new ways of understanding the caring encounter. Through facilitating re-enactment of their real-life scenarios pre-registration nursing students both discussed and practiced nurse: patient interactions, reflecting on how caring and uncaring communication sounds and feels. Role-play and simulation is not new in training nursing students but the innovative aspect of this project was the way working with drama students enabled participation and reflection through elements of 'Simultaneous Dramaturgy' and 'Forum Theatre' in this paediatric palliative context. Keywords communication skills participatory performance interactive techniques 2 palliative care care education Forum Theatre

The use of a theatre workshop in developing effective communication in paediatric end of life care

“…Seven scenarios from final year child branch nursing students studying at a different university detailed an array of potentially difficult conversations around paediatric end of life care that had either been witnessed or faced in clinical practice (Table 1). The scenarios were reviewed, selected and developed into a performance scene by the drama students (Reeves and Neilson, 2018).…”

Transforming empathy to empathetic practice amongst nursing and drama students

“…During the performance drama, students initially shared scenes where they acted in roles as nurses responding with an obvious lack of empathy. The process is described in detail elsewhere (Reeves and Neilson 2018;Neilson and Reeves 2019). Poor practice was easily identified by nurses and the immediate stepped feedback meant nursing students were implementing empathetic responses in the specialised context and reflecting on their appropriateness in real time.…”

“…Using participatory drama techniques, including forum theatre (Boal 1979), recognised as beneficial to action-based learning (Neilson and Reeves 2019), nurses participated in developing good communication skills with patients and reflected on feelings that arose when they witnessed poor communication in the re-enacted scenes. Details of this workshop and the research methods are reported elsewhere (Reeves and Neilson 2018;Neilson and Reeves 2019).…”