What are the impacts of the annual Medical Student/Faculty Show (SFS) on the academic performance (students), psychosocial well-being, resilience and attitudes of student and faculty participants and non-participants?
A long-standing tradition in the Duke University School of Medicine is performance of the Medical Student/Faculty Show (SFS). In recent years, the show has been a light-hearted parody and celebration of the lived experiences of medical students in the Duke University School of Medicine. The show is presented as a two-act, theatrical and musical performance conceived, written, produced, directed and acted by medical students. Typically, some number of senior leadership, associate deans, assistant deans, faculty and staff are written into the show for cameo appearances and/or performance in the accompanying live stage band. To view the 2019 edition, click here: “Duke’s Avengers: Civil Wards”. As anyone who has ever attended the SFS can attest, the performance highlights the creativity, talent, experience and dedication of many students and faculty and reflects months of rehearsals leading up to the annual March performance. With such a significant demand on at least some key personnel involved in the show, it is reasonable to assume that there are significant impacts—both positive and negative—on those who participate, with collateral impacts affecting non-participating students, faculty, administrators and staff. With the exception of recent attempts to explore academic performance of first-year students around the time of the performance, such impacts have largely been the objects of speculation and conjecture. Nevertheless, several faculty and administrators have voiced strong, but we suspect poorly-informed, opinions about the potential benefits and liabilities associated with student participation in the show, with the main object of such opinions being the impact on student exam performance in the concurrent first-year course, “Body and Disease”. Such concerns about performance on concurrent exams may be reasonable and well-founded. However, many other important questions remain unexplored, such as: Are there academic risks associated with participation in the show that vary with level of participation? Does student participation in the show stave off the burn-out that recent study indicates increases monotonically across the first-year? Are there positive benefits in self-efficacy and well-being conferred by student participation in the show? Are there collateral impacts—positive or negative—on students who do not participate? Are there similar impacts on faculty who participate? How do the impacts of the show modulate over time? Student participation in theatre can be understood in the theory and practice of educators and dramatists, such as Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal, who advocate for theatre as a pedagogical tool capable of building critical-awareness and understanding of multiple perspectives and experiences. This suggests that the SFS could be a critical means for students (and faculty) to gain a deeper understanding of themselves as medical learners bound to particular community in the Duke University Medical Center. Moreover, decades of work in medical humanities confirm that theatre can improve a medical learner's communication skills (and thereby patient outcomes) through more effective problem solving, decision making, and collaboration. Recent research (Nagji et al., 2013) suggests medical student participation in optional theatre modules can increase well-being, work-life balance, resilience, and quality of life. Might such frameworks also help us understand the relevance and impacts of student participation in the Duke Medical Student/Faculty Show? Our overall goal is to design and execute a mixed methods, ethnographic study of the multi-dimensional impacts of the annual SFS to address such questions and close the existing gap between opinion and evidence. Although we are equally concerned for possible long-term impacts of participation in the show (throughout the years of medical education at Duke and beyond), our pilot study will focus on the experience of the March 2020 show.
- 2019