Gold Human Insight Webinar | Clinical Improv: Cross-Training Your Communication Muscles

This Gold Human Insight Webinar, “Clinical Improv: Cross-Training Your Communication Muscles,” will be released on Tuesday, January 12, 2021. This webinar will focus on improvisational theater skills, which have a surprising and substantial overlap with skills required of clinicians.

The webinar will feature Elizabeth Bojsza, Assistant Professor of Practice, and Susmita Pati, MD, MPH, Chief Medical Program Advisor, of Alda Center for Communicating Science and Howard Silverman MD MS. Professor, Biomedical Informatics, Family & Community Medicine, and Bioethics & Medical Humanism, The University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix. Dr. Silverman is also a former Gold Trustee and the immediate past chair of the Gold Humanism Honor Society Advisory Council.

Improv is a genre of performance art grounded in principles of spontaneity, adaptability, collaboration, and skilled listening. Clinical Improv is an emerging field being developed and studied in which improv principles and training techniques are used to improve cognition, communication, and teamwork in the field of medicine.

Learning Objectives

1. Define clinical improv and review evidence underlying the use of clinical improv training to enhance humanistic team and clinical communication skills while meeting new challenges and opportunities, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.
2. Review how clinical improv training can be utilized in clinical training programs.
3. Describe learner experiences and learnings from clinical improv training.
4. Demonstrate the application of clinical improv training.