Caring from behind the face mask in healthcare: Learning from the dramatic arts.

Paul Murphy,Gerard J Gormley,Dearbhail Lewis

doi:10.1007/s40037-021-00691-8

Paul Murphy, Gerard J Gormley + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s40037-021-00691-8

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Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has made its impact across the globe with great voracity. New routines have displaced older more established ones with ruthless efficiency—no more so than in healthcare. In meeting these challenges, many healthcare workers have had to prepare for and enact many new ways of working. Regardless of their speciality or stage of training, health professions educators (HPEs) have helped train our healthcare workforce in developing new skills with great tempo. Throughout all of these efforts one constant has guided our endeavours—the humane connection with those that provide and those that seek healthcare.However, with COVID-19 we have had to distance ourselves from our patients, and colleagues, and clad ourselves in various items of personal protection equipment (PPE). The protective barrier also acts as a barrier to personal interaction and therefore presents challenges in how we connect with each other on a humane level. Few disciplines have engaged with the complexities of verbal and gestural communication as thoroughly and consistently as the dramatic arts. Actors in Ancient Greece would perform wearing masks and used oratory as well as gestural communication to enrapture the audience.Drawing upon the dramatic arts, we aim to explore the relationship between face and mask and thereby provide reflective insights for HPEs to help guide healthcare workers in their communication from behind the face mask.

Highlights

The COVID-19 pandemic has made its impact across the globe with great relentlessness
With COVID-19 we have had to distance ourselves from our patients, and colleagues, and clad ourselves in various items of personal protection equipment (PPE)
The protective barrier acts as a barrier to personal interaction and presents challenges in how we connect with each other on a humane level (Fig. 1)

Summary

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has made its impact across the globe with great relentlessness. Many healthcare workers (HCWs) have had to prepare for and enact many new ways of working Regardless of their speciality or stage of training, health professions educators (HPEs) have helped train our HCWs in developing new skills with great tempo. The notion of face-work is based on the premise that the interactants can see (or feel) each other’s face and interpret their respective gestures and manage their impressions Goffman further evolves his notion of face-work in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life and begins the book with the contention that when an individual is in the ‘presence of others’ they will ‘have to act’ so that they ‘intentionally or unintentionally express’ themselves, and ‘the others will in turn have to be impressed by’ them [9, p. The emotional dimension of social interaction that Goffman examines is an essential and often overlooked aspect of communicating with patients in the dual sense of the emotional impression made by the HCW on the patient and the emotional impression made upon the HCW during challenging conversations

Adapting to the face mask through configurations of the whole body

Conclusion