How a String Quartet Can Teach Healthcare Providers

Medical and pharmacy students learn about body language and visual cues that musicians use to communicate during performances.

Medical and pharmacy students at Wayne State University have learned about nonverbal communication from a string quartet.

Communication is a critical skill in medicine. Communication is crucial in interprofessional interactions as well as in encounters between healthcare providers and patients.

Recently, The Viano Quartet came to Wayne State University School of Medicine's Margherio Family Conference Center to hold a rehearsal and provide an educational session for 65 third-year medical students and 50 pharmacy students. This is the third year in a row that musicians have schooled Wayne State healthcare students about nonverbal communication.

The string quartet modeled valuable communication skills, says Aline Saad, PharmD, director of interprofessional education at Wayne State's Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. "We want to show our students how musicians communicate with each other—they give cues to each other to decide who is going to lead utilizing intonations and body movements to send messages to their colleagues. As healthcare providers, we can communicate amongst each other similarly and emphasize the importance of working as a team."

The musicians show that communication takes practice, she says. "When a quartet goes on stage, they have practiced many times before. We want to give our students the message that communication is a skill that does not always come intuitively and that we must practice it. With the string quartet, we can learn from a group that is cohesive, coherent, and capable of producing a piece of music that an audience can enjoy. They prepare themselves to communicate. We want our students to prepare to communicate effectively and cohesively with patients."

Members of the string quartet engage in several forms of nonverbal communication, says Georgina Marusca, MD, a resident in internal medicine at Detroit Medical Center and a graduate of Wayne State University School of Medicine who has attended all three of the musician sessions. "From an audience standpoint, you can see mostly nonverbal communication such as body language. Sometimes, there are subtle cues with head motions. There are also breathing cues—if they have a rest in the music, they take a breath."

The exercise helps prepare healthcare providers to work with patients, she says. "When it comes to communication between clinicians and patients, from a quartet we can learn facial expressions and visual cues that can help guide us in our treatments and how we make diagnoses. You also learn that it is helpful to practice communication beforehand. For example, if you are going to give a patient a diagnosis that is unfavorable, then you can practice what and how you are going to say with another medical professional before you talk with the patient."

Learning about nonverbal communication generates several benefits for healthcare providers, Marusca says.

"It is tied into the sensitivity that you need in this profession. It also helps strengthen the patient-physician relationship because if you are attuned to nonverbal communication, it is less likely that you will dismiss the patient or not pick up on things that the patient is reluctant to talk about. Mastering nonverbal communication can also reduce medical mistakes in terms of what is prescribed and what can work with a patient because nonverbal communication can be applied not only with the patient but also family members who come to a visit. Among medical professionals, nonverbal communication can help with verbal communication by giving you cues on what to say or giving you feedback from a colleague," she says.