Exploring the Impact of Professional Acting on Empathy Development in Medical Students

This small, single-group pilot suggests that a brief, theatre-based, pre-clerkship programme co-facilitated by a professional actor and clinician may enhance observable empathic communication behaviours in simulated breaking-bad-news encounters. Although limited by the small, self-selected sample and absence of a control group, the findings support further, larger-scale and longitudinal evaluation of theatre-based empathy teaching within arts-and-humanities-informed medical curricula.