Co-Creating Care: Lessons from the Stage (EP:44)

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Co-Creating Care: Lessons from the Stage (EP:44)
With Marco Antonio de Carvalho Filho, MD, PHD

If medical education is meant to prepare people for the emotional realities of patient care, what might change if we taught students not only to do the work, but to fully inhabit the person they are becoming while doing it? Join host Stacy Craft, and guest Professor Dr. Carvalho Filho, as we explore an unexpected but deeply powerful intersection: the meeting of theater and medical education. Dr. Marco shares how the traditions of the stage, presence, imagination, emotional awareness, and co-creation, offer transformative possibilities for how we train future clinicians. Through stories of working with actors, facilitating embodied learning, and creating safe spaces for vulnerability, he reveals how theater can move education beyond checklists and simulations into something far more human.

We discuss why presence matters more than prescribed communication “skills,” how students can reclaim their identities while learning to care for others, and why cultivating joy, curiosity, and emotional resilience may be essential to the health of both clinicians and the profession itself. From co-constructed simulations to long-form theatrical workshops, this episode invites us to rethink what meaningful learning and meaningful care can look like.