Tenth International Conference on Health, Wellness & Society

Abstract

Extensive evidence in several countries has established that many health care clinicians experience mistreatment and poor workplace behaviour from colleagues. We developed a creative response to this issue, which is the use of designed acting skills workshops. These used non-didactic and embodied practices to strengthen participants’ ethical professionalism. The workshops have been very positively evaluated by participants. In this paper, we aim to set out the multidisciplinary theoretical framework that informed the design of the workshops. “Enacting professionalism” is a theoretical framework that integrates four propositions: 1) That workplace communication and interaction can be understood as micro systems, with the implication that changing any input can affect the dynamics of the system; 2) That the psychological construct of “differentiation of self” adequately captures the moral growth necessary for the development of mature professionalism; 3) That embodied learning is a key tool for reflexivity and hence, differentiation; and 4) That “acting the role” of doctor can be pursued authentically and as an embodied practice. We theorized that professionalism would develop as an emergence from the embodied and interactive practices used by each individual to authentically perform being a doctor. Drawing from techniques used by professional actors to develop a stage role, we discuss how these propositions create a theoretical framework, enacting professionalism, whose operationalisation can improve reflexivity, increase capacity to communicate effectively, and also increase differentiation in healthcare students and workers. We discuss our operationalisation of this framework through the use Boalian theatre-for-change techniques.