Getting teenagers to be candid and open up during communications can be challenging for any adult, but the stakes are higher when the adult is a physician trying to diagnose and treat a teenage with a healthy amount of suspicion or distrust of authority.
A new residency program in Utah is seeking to address that by linking pediatric residents with teen actors for roleplay sessions to help coach the residents on the best responses to difficult communication scenarios, according to a
Deseret News report.
The teen actors take on personas such as a chatty, pregnant teenage or one with drug problems that is completely shut down. Following the encounters, the actors gave the physicians feedback from an adolescent perspective on how they reacted to or interpreted the communications.
The residents said they found the experience helpful in terms of learning how to respond better or react to scenarios they were likely to face as practicing pediatricians.