Role Play in Medical Education: A Review on Current Evidence
Role Play in Medical Education: A Review on Current Evidence
Bahar Moasses Ghafari,1,*Parsa Hasanabadi,2
1. Assistant Professor, Medicine Faculty, Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences, Sanandaj, Iran 2. Faculty of Medicine, Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences, Sanandaj, Iran
Introduction: Visionary teaching-learning strategies are necessary to facilitate community orientation and boost cognition of the social determinants of health among millennial trainees in the health professions. One of these strategies is role-playing. Role-playing is a powerful and active learning method through which students and teachers present lessons dramatically to others. Hence, students cooperate more in learning. The importance of this method is to improve professionalism among trainees in medical sciences.
Methods: Authors scoped to determine the impact of role-playing in medical education. For this purpose, we searched systematicaly in "PubMed", "Scopus", and "Web of Science".The keywords in this search were "role-playing", "medical education". This review aimed to examine the impact of role-playing on Medical Education output.
Results: Studies have shown that the role-playing as a teaching method, helps trainees upgrade their communication skills, helps doctors to understand patients' behavior and doctors' reactions, improves counseling for resident doctors, bridges the gap between teaching and learning, promotes insight among students in patients and therapists' roles in mental health, and strengthen clinical reasoning. Although role-playing has a crucial impact on health promotion, it enhances the realism of trainees, develops community practice and motivation of students, improves the practical skills of trainees, recognizes patients' issues, and provides long-lasting lessons.
Conclusion: Based on the colossal medicine program, performing role-playing for all lesson titles was neither enforceable nor wise. Thus, role-playing should be implemented in lessons such as Family Medicine and Medical Genetics and in topics where trainees should learn to communicate with patients. Another critical point of role-playing is the enhancement of the Communities of Practice (CoP), including students in practice more than ever before and training more empowered clinicians.