New Students Receive Dramatic Welcome from Campus Leaders

Nearly 500 new UCSF students received a welcome they won’t soon forget, as a group of deans and other University leaders performed educational skits complete with oversized props and the occasional fake accent.

During the 4th annual Interprofessional Education Day, nine deans, department heads and other administrators flexed their acting chops to call attention to the important issues of interdisciplinary collaboration and health care disparities. The audience comprised 479 new students joining UCSF’s schools of medicine, pharmacy, dentistry and nursing, as well as its Doctorate in Physical Therapy (DPT) program.

The skits all focused on stereotypes, biases and the miscommunication that can easily occur in a hospital setting, and they aimed to get the new students thinking about the importance of cross-disciplinary communication and teamwork, said Nancy Adler, PhD, a professor of psychiatry and director of the UCSF Center for Health and Community.

“We want to tear down some of the silos that separate the health professions,” she said in her introductory remarks.

That goal speaks directly to the first priority in UCSF’s campuswide strategic plan: to ensure that “students and trainees are immersed in a culture that embraces interdisciplinary, interprofessional and transdisciplinary educational programs.”

“Learning to work with colleagues in a positive way will inform both you as a human being and also your contributions to health care,” Chancellor Sue Desmond-Hellmann, MD, MPH, told the newcomers in her first formal speech to a group of UCSF students since assuming her new position.

With the aid of props such as cardboard telephones and a giant “thought bubble” to signify a character’s internal monologue, the unusual cast acted out scenarios in which poor communication led to low-quality care and dissatisfied patients.

In one skit, for example, a man with severe jaw pain who only spoke Spanish was passed around among hospital employees who were unable to communicate with him.

Before doctors could prescribe opiates to ease his pain, they needed to find out if he took any recreational drugs, prompting one staff member to ask, in broken Spanish: “How much heroin or cocaine do you use every day?”

“Do you think all Mexicans are drug addicts?” the patient snarled, before storming out of the hospital untreated.

After each skit, the students held small group discussions about what went wrong and how those problems could have been avoided.

Often, their solutions were tied to better listening, both among health care providers and between providers and their patients — a skill that keynote speaker Kevin Grumbach, MD, called “the most important thing about being a doctor.”

“You must learn to listen to the poem that is within each patient,” said Grumbach, professor and chair of the UCSF Department of Family and Community Medicine and chief of Family and Community Medicine at San Francisco General Hospital. “Those poems will speak to you about humanity and the meaning of your calling, and you will be the richer for it.”

This year’s incoming students include 152 medical students; 122 pharmacy students; 88 dentistry students; 84 nursing students; and 33 physical therapy students.

Photos by Susan Merrell

Related Links:

UCSF Unveils Strategic Plan to Guide its Global Leadership in Advancing Health
UCSF Today, June 28, 2007