Friday, September 20, 2013

Health Cast: a unique collaboration between Theatre and Nursing students

HealthCAST is a new collaboration between the Department of Theatre & Dance and the School of Nursing that casts and trains actors to portray patients suffering from a variety of physical and emotional symptoms.  Actors work alongside a dedicated director and subject matter experts to make sure they are portraying the patient—and their symptoms—accurately and convincingly during improvised encounters with students at the School of Nursing’s Translational Health Science Simulation Center.


For more information on HealthCAST, or to become involved with this exciting collaborative program, please email Alex Munro at hcast@hawaii.edu.

To see a video about Health Cast:

http://www.hawaii.edu/news/2014/02/24/real-drama-benefits-nursing-students/
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1 comment:

  1. TIMOTHY CALLAISSeptember 27, 2013 at 2:15 AM

    This new collaboration with UH’s Theatre and Dance Department and the Department of Nursing is an incredible benefit of this community. HealthCAST is making my education possible. I am an MFA Acting Candidate, and I currently hold a Graduate Assistantship that involves teaching two sessions of Acting I, as well as acting with HealthCAST. I would not be able to pursue a higher education if not for this new collaboration.

    As an actor, it not only requires strong improvisational skills and a complete and incessant commitment to character, but you are experiencing acting in its most realistic form – and, in possibly the best scenario, you are applying Stanislavski’s magic “if,” and reacting truthfully under imaginary circumstances.

    This type of training and exposure to human connection is astronomical in the development of health care. The nursing students are dropped right in the middle of a “medical war-zone” and they have to use their human communication skills and empathize with the “patients.” They can take these memories of the actor’s reactions to their efforts as they graduate into the nursing profession.

    I am so grateful to be a part of this spectacular moment in medical history. This is also a very special moment in theatre history. HealthCAST is a loud and clear argument for the use, or rather, need for theatre and the arts in this ever growing world of science and technology. Together we can foster any community. This is only the beginning.

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