How a project teaching clowning, mime, and dance techniques to medical students is helping them develop communication skills and bring compassion to their work.
How a project teaching clowning, mime, and dance techniques to medical students is helping them develop communication skills and bring compassion to their work.
Amid hi-tech machines, a blood-smeared body lies on a hospital bed with what looks like a bullethole in its side. It’s a mannequin, but one that sweats, breathes and bleeds. The room feels like the sort of eerily accurate A&E ward you might stray into at a Punchdrunk immersive theatre performance. But this is not a scene set for an audience. Instead, it’s part of a new £500,000 project at St Thomas’ hospital in Londonto train doctors, nurses and paramedics in physical theatre.
Performing Medicine is led by director Suzy Willson and her company Clod Ensemble. She has been working with medical students for a number of years, but this project – funded by Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity – is the first to be embedded in a real hospital, working with frontline staff. Performers will work with the Simulation and Interactive Learning Centre (SaIL) at St Thomas’, which allows doctors, nurses and paramedics to experience emergencies before they have to attend them for real... Keep reading on The Guardian