Halmos College of Arts and Sciences Healthcare Theatre Course Trains Future Frontline Workers in the Art of Empathy

When you think about theatre, terms like actor, performance or even William Shakespeare probably come to mind. Do you happen to think of the word empathy? Bill Adams, associate professor/coordinator of performing arts for HCAS’s Department of Communication, Media, and the Arts, is helping healthcare students – and future frontline workers – learn the art of empathy with his Healthcare Theatre course.

Adams designed the course with Melissa Morris, director of simulation and interactive technology for NSU’s Dr. Pallavi Patel College of Health Care Sciences. Students enrolled in the course work to develop empathetic responses as standardized patients and play roles such as patients, family members and caregivers. The student nurses and doctors who are training with them receive more life-like empathetic responses in their simulations and offer standardized feedback to healthcare students in training.

NSU began offering the course in January 2020, and it is now offered through the HCAS Department of Communication, Media, and the Arts

The course is open to students of all majors and seeks to foster innovative collaboration between students in different disciplines, Adams said.

“Imagine the nursing major giving feedback on the performance of the acting major in an effort to better perform a simulation – but the concepts are reversible because the actors and theatre makers are not only learning how to craft theatre in applied circumstances, but doctors, nurses and other healthcare providers are learning from actors how to be more empathetic in practice,” Adams said.

To learn more about the Healthcare Theatre course, click here.