Elements from theatre art as learning tools in medical education

For the project, an actress created a patient character, staging a consultation among a group of 36 medical students. The consultation process was monitored by a teacher and was stopped by ‘timeout’ at any critical incidence. Students reflected on possible strategies and, one at a time tried out their own or someone else's proposal. The project was developed for medical students during spring 2003. The material used was the teacher's and the actress’ field notes, the students’ written free text evaluation and students’ evaluation from a focus group of four students. The research was based on the reflective practitioner design, and the analyses were carried out in terms of ‘the fourth wall’, manipulated temporality and the fiction created. We conclude that stimulating medical students to develop a real-time consultation with an actress/patient collectively, through reflection and performance in a dramatic fiction, probably advanced their abilities in mastering difficult consultations.