Intro
Introduction to Hosts and Guest
00:00:41
Melanie Barlow
Welcome to Simulation Happy Hour. I'm Mel Barlow.
00:00:46
Kerry Reid-Searl
And I'm Kerry Reid-Searl
00:00:48
Melanie Barlow
And today we have a special guest, Alastair Tomkins. So
Alastair's Artistic and Educational Background
00:00:53
Melanie Barlow
Alastair is the Student Life Officer at Australian Catholic University and a multidisciplinary performing artist and arts educator with a passion for improvising.
00:01:05
Melanie Barlow
He holds multiple degrees, including a Masters of Education, and has a teaching focus on how improvising supports cognition, modalities of thinking and multiple intelligences, as well as creative capacity as an actor.
00:01:21
Melanie Barlow
Alastair has
Professional Experience and ImproCog Foundation
00:01:21
Melanie Barlow
studied theatre with the renowned clown teacher Philippe Goulier in London and has performed in improvised shows across Australia and in the UK, Japan and France.
00:01:34
Melanie Barlow
He's also assistant director for Bluey's World Experience in Brisbane, where he teaches improvising to the performance crew. polymath and prac academic arts educator with a passion for improvising, Alistair has a strong track record of workshop presenting, professional development, development, design and learner engagement over a 20-year period.
00:01:58
Melanie Barlow
He is the founder of ImproCog, an organisation which promotes and benefits of improvising and cognitive processes in students and adults.
00:02:08
Melanie Barlow
Alistair has presented on applied improvisation at the Australian Catholic University National Health and Simulation Conference in the University of New South Wales, JERIC program for gifted and talented students and Drama Australia and Drama Queensland conferences.
00:02:27
Melanie Barlow
Wow, what a CV. Welcome, Alastair
00:02:31
Kerry Reid-Searl
Thank you.
00:02:31
Alastair
G'day everyone and thank you Mel.
00:02:34
Melanie Barlow
It's great to have you.
Understanding Improv and Its Applications
00:02:37
Melanie Barlow
to kick off, it's probably a good place to start to say, can you explain what improv is?
00:02:43
Alastair
Okay, improv or impro, depending on where you are in the world, is short for improvisation. So from my point of view, it's a word that encapsulates dramatic and comedic improvising. So when a performance is devised and delivered in the moment without rehearsal or practice, it could be a solo improvised performance or it could be with an ensemble.
00:03:10
Alastair
And it covers a lot of things people might know on TV shows like Whose Line Is It Anyway? Back in the 80s and 90s, there was theatre sports on TV. There's an Australian show, Thank God You're Here, where they put an improvising actor into a situation where other people have got problems and obstacles for them to overcome in in real real time.
00:03:31
Alastair
So, yeah, it's all of those things. And it can also be applied to other situations such as healthcare education.
00:03:40
Jenny
So, I was having a look at your CV and I'm really curious know, how did you get from improv into education and simulation? Where was the spark that connected you there?
Transition to Education and Creative Capacity Building
00:03:53
Alastair
That's a really good question. um mother was a teacher and my mother-in-law was a teacher, librarian. And I guess I've always had people around me that were encouraging of my capacity to pass on knowledge and inspire young people as well as to be able to have a range of ways of explaining something.
00:04:17
Alastair
So I was doing teaching and ah and ah unknowingly passing on my skills and passing on content knowledge before I even entered the profession in a formal manner.
00:04:30
Alastair
Often I was tasked with explaining games to other people or leading a group. So it kind of flowed on from there. I was able to get a job in a fantastic school in Brisbane called Sheldon College where I was able to have a ah ah pretty good reign and to show the benefits of improvising from primary into secondary and then into whatever they chose after that.
00:04:57
Alastair
And I looked upon it in that instance as building creative capacity. That was my remit part of my job. And then came into the tertiary sector. Yep.
Engagement Through Improv and Divergent Thinking
00:05:11
Kerry Reid-Searl
So, Alistair, can you give us an example of i'm a classroom teacher or, no, perhaps I'm a nursing academic and I've got a group of students in ah in a classroom, clinical lab, and I'm going to teach them a topic of vital signs, blood pressure, pulse, temperature, respiration.
00:05:34
Kerry Reid-Searl
How could I use IMPRO in that context? What sort of tips could you give to our listeners are starting off in simulation of how this might work?
00:05:47
Alastair
Okay, in that situation, and I certainly bow to the expert knowledge here in the panel and also with the listeners, in that situation for me, my first explicit point of teaching would be around the ability to generate lists Generating lists allows you to um um offload some of the cognitive weight, the cognitive load.
00:06:11
Alastair
So if you the key word was blood pressure, I would be encouraging the students to think about that as a divergent thinking stimulus. So I've said the key word blood pressure, what comes to mind?
00:06:24
Alastair
And all of the things that come to mind are essential elements of a list that you might create. And that list easily transfers into a checklist.
00:06:34
Alastair
Have we checked the following things with regards to blood pressure? Now, this type of divergent thinking sort of explosion of ideas, it's like a firework going off from a central stimulus.
00:06:45
Alastair
It would be the way to get students into that would be to say, when I say the word Paris, France, what comes to mind? And there are no wrong answers.
00:06:56
Alastair
And you you would harvest the answers from the group. You'd say Baguette, Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Mona Lisa, black berets, stripy shirts, French films, croissants.
00:07:09
Alastair
These things are all correct answers for the stimulus of Paris. And then I would take that methodology across into whatever the health subject was.
00:07:21
Alastair
What is my, what are your responses when I say blood pressure? And then we create a divergent schemata around that and that can come into a list and then we can go, great, we've generated a list.
00:07:34
Alastair
How do we perhaps prioritize these lists? What's the most important thing from this list? And that's when critical thinking comes in because As an educator, you can say, oh, the well, the patient's currently losing blood. is Is that going to impact on the priority of the list?
00:07:48
Alastair
Or the patient is old. Or the patient seems to be lapsing into unconsciousness. Does that change your priority?
Role Play in Healthcare Education
00:07:55
Alastair
So that would be my first entry point for impro-divergent thinking into that particular situation that you've described.
00:08:07
Melanie Barlow
That's really interesting. So that's about I don't know, you could do that anywhere in any kind of learning environment.
00:08:16
Melanie Barlow
How does that then translate into role play?
00:08:19
Melanie Barlow
Because role play, from my experience, a lot of educators and academics don't view role play as simulation, but it is like one of the most broadly used modalities of simulation.
00:08:33
Melanie Barlow
How do those two work together?
00:08:38
Alastair
Good question. My take on it from an outsider's point looking into healthcare education, my take on it is that healthcare is about the human narrative.
00:08:51
Alastair
Healthcare is about the human narrative. So if we want to provide good healthcare, we need tools and techniques to explore the human narrative. Now, we would all be familiar even on a personal level with going to a doctor or to a physio or whatever.
00:09:10
Alastair
They often have a series coming back to lists now. They often have a series of lists of of questions that they ask you. What they're doing in that instance is drawing out your narrative.
00:09:20
Alastair
What happened? When did it happen? How did it happen? Deep question. Why did it happen? And then you are providing some type of feedback and some type of collection of facts and data about the injury or your situation.
00:09:41
Alastair
Now when that comes to role play simulation, focusing on the human narrative, we're focusing on the relationship, the human authentic relationship between two people.
00:09:54
Alastair
One of them is a healthcare professional, the other is a patient, or in some cases, the parent of a patient. The healthcare professional in their role needs to extract enough information and enough narrative from the patient to be able to provide an informed view of what the patient's going through.
00:10:17
Alastair
And hopefully that informed view will translate into a good healthcare outcome. The opposite of that would be not asking any questions. taking a superficial cursory view of what's happened and then coming to a conclusion.
00:10:33
Alastair
So the role play element is about getting people to engage on a human level and trying to get the best outcome for the patient based on the the the information that you've extracted about their personal narrative.
00:10:50
Alastair
That's my way of looking in on what do and and what your listeners do in sim, in simulation, role play simulation.
Encouraging Creative Risks in Education
00:11:00
Jenny
if I'm a new academic and I'm listening to this really interesting podcast, do I need any formal training? How do I get into improv? If I'm interested in it, how would you suggest, you know, new academics or academics who have been doing it for a while, how do I implement this into my repertoire of teaching tools?
00:11:21
Alastair
Good question. I think the first thing that you would encourage you to do is to back yourself and to take a creative risk. As soon as we move out of our comfort zone and take on a new technique for teaching, there's that element of, oh, I'm not very good at this or this won't work or it works for others but it doesn't work for me.
00:11:40
Alastair
So the first thing I'd say is back yourself, just the way we tell our students to back themselves. And you have to be your own coach on your shoulder saying, keep going. You're getting better. It's good.
00:11:51
Alastair
are plenty of of online resources. And that's something that I'm even working on right at the moment with ImproCog to design resources around roleplay readiness and other elements that will be used in healthcare professionals.
00:12:06
Alastair
An easy game that we can play straight off is a game called Yes And. So this is a common practice when we improvise, when our partner gives us an idea, which we would call an offer, we acknowledge what our partner has done and said by saying yes.
00:12:24
Alastair
And we add information to boost or to elevate what our partner has said. So an example might be in real life, imagine there's two people talking, person A says, let's go to the gym.
00:12:39
Alastair
Person B says, yes. And while I'm there, i might try out the new exercise bikes. Person A says, yes, I saw them the other day, they look great.
00:12:52
Alastair
Person B says, yes. And I hear they've got free personal training this month. Person A says, yes. Why don't we head off after class? Person B, yes, that's a great idea. I can take your bag if you want.
00:13:06
Alastair
Person A, yes, I'll give you a lift. It's going to be great. So that's very scaffolded conversation about real life. We're hearing what each person says and we're validating it and boosting it by saying yes and.
00:13:23
Alastair
Now, if we were to do this in a change the frame and drag that technique across into nursing, for example, and again, forgive my lack of all of the technical terms that nursing educators might use, but it might be two nursing students speaking and it might be a case of, I'm going to check on that particular patient.
00:13:46
Alastair
Yes, and while you're there, can you check if they've eaten their meal from this morning? Yes, I will. I noticed that they're not really got a strong appetite at the moment.
00:13:58
Alastair
Yes, I've noticed that as well. I'm going to mention that in their case notes, or I'm going to let the doctor know this afternoon. Yes, I'll also make sure that they've got adequate water, or I'll check their blood pressure while I'm there, whatever it might be. So that's an example of how we take yes and into a clinical setting.
00:14:17
Alastair
The opposite of yes and would be, I'm going to check the patient. Okay,
00:14:23
Alastair
That's a very short conversation and it's not really collaborative. It's not collegial. It's not supportive. And I think for our undergraduate learners especially, it just leaves them hanging and leaves them feeling out on their own in terms of what they're about to do.
00:14:39
Alastair
rather than having that energy of a back and forth yes-anded conversation where their ideas have been validated. You can still correct an idea using yes-and. You don't have to agree with everything they've said.
00:14:55
Alastair
But it's just removing the direct no or the direct contradiction in that terms. And remember, this is a teaching and learning tool about collaborative conversations.
00:15:06
Alastair
Obviously, in the real world, there would be times when you do need to actually say no or stop or... those types of things. So this is to get students talking to each other, actively listening and in an active state of conversation and collegial support in their learning area.
Debriefing and Emotional Depth in Role Play
00:15:28
Kerry Reid-Searl
I find this work fascinating, Alistair, and question to you now is, you know, as with the yes and and would imagine that conversations can get quite deep and quite meaningful as well, in our listening, audience out there may often use role play where they, the academics, immerse themselves into patience and students then interact. And it can get quite deep and meaningful. And just using one example, I'm not sure that you've heard of a ah ah concept called Masked.
00:16:06
Kerry Reid-Searl
It's a simulation technique where we actually don silicon props and we transfer into another person. And those conversations and complexities can get very deep and emotional.
00:16:18
Kerry Reid-Searl
And my question to you, as these conversations get deeper and you see that active listening and you see that collaboration, the person who is playing that role and has become potentially delved parts of themselves into that conversation, what's your response in terms of debriefing those persons in that acting role.
00:16:45
Kerry Reid-Searl
We often debrief students, but we sometimes walk away from the context of a classroom or a um laboratory context, and we haven't thought about debriefing ourselves or have anybody there with us as we unpack what has just happened.
00:17:03
Kerry Reid-Searl
My thoughts or your question, my question is your thoughts around that.
00:17:09
Alastair
Great question, and and I can imagine the the clinical sim ward and things like that as as were describing that. When you're talking about those silicon masks, mask in drama has been around for thousands of years as as a performance tool. There's evidence going right back to the ancient Greeks, and that's where our comedy and tragedy masks come from.
00:17:31
Alastair
And when we teach students, for example, with Red Nose Clown, we often say to them, your red nose is the smallest theatrical mask in the world.
00:17:44
Alastair
It's clear that you are in role when that mask is on. And when the mask comes off, it is clear that you are out of role. If it's possible, my um drama advice would be that if we were doing a theatrical production that required the actors to regularly go into heavy...
00:18:05
Alastair
emotional territory or doing subject matter that is ah ah taboo in our society or that comes with great personal loss and human trauma, then there would be ways that the theatrical organisation would have to allow our actors to debrief after each one.
00:18:28
Alastair
It might be as simple as saying simulation over, removing the mask, packing away character's name. never Never use your own name when you're using a character.
00:18:43
Alastair
Always have a separate ah ah identity and a persona for whatever that masked character is called. That allows you to separate them in your mind because you've heard a different person's name being associated with you in the mask.
00:18:58
Alastair
I would have some phrases to habitually and ah ah ritualistically say, like, I really enjoyed being enrolled today, but it did come, it did show a lot of deep emotions.
00:19:15
Alastair
So that might be one phrase that could say. If you've got a colleague, an academic colleague or a peer that you can debrief with in private, That might be helpful.
00:19:26
Alastair
And again, this comes with a level of trust and vulnerability and openness. Your peer might say to you, wow, I've I thought I heard you crying at that point.
00:19:38
Alastair
And you might say, yeah, I was crying. I've seen patients like this. I've observed this, or this has happened to my own parents, or this happened to me. And then your peer might say, do you, wow, want to talk about it?
00:19:53
Alastair
And then it's whatever the choice of the person is in that moment. and say, no, look, I'm good. I'm good. It's just it came up and possibly an affirmation by a peer or a colleague at that time, like, I thought you did a great job and it was really authentic.
00:20:10
Alastair
We see patients that are in an emotional state just like you were in. And what you did today for your students was really powerful and it was a beautiful gift of your lived experience.
00:20:22
Alastair
Something like that. If you're doing that type of heavy emotional sim on your own, maybe it would be a technique to have your your phone handy and just to debrief into your phone, just to record a little voice memo.
00:20:36
Alastair
saying, wow, that was big. We were doing palliative care and I had some recollections of my own parents or what I've seen in the ward with a patient over a long period of time. And I got pretty upset today felt a sense of loss.
00:20:55
Alastair
also know that I was in role and that wasn't me. And I know that my emotional memories are part of my lived experience and I acknowledge that and that's what makes me human.
00:21:08
Alastair
And my ability to be emotional and vulnerable and open, just like an actor, is a really powerful thing to bring into education. Because you can imagine what the opposite of that is, that I'm not vulnerable, I'm not open, and and I'm not authentic.
00:21:24
Alastair
We're talking about some type of robot in that instance. And that is not about the human narrative. That's about something else. There's no lived experience. So I hope that's a long answer to ah very powerful question.
00:21:38
Alastair
So have a peer, if you can.
00:21:41
Alastair
and have that shoulder to lean on if you can, or debrief and reflect on it maybe into a phone and have a cup of tea or maybe chat with your partner or someone you you live with later in the day.
00:21:56
Alastair
That would be my advice. I'm sure there are other opinions available on that topic as well.
00:22:00
Kerry Reid-Searl
Yeah, thanks, Alistair. That's ah ah some really good key points for our audience to take away because, and I'm not implying that what all use masks, but when our educators move into role play and they are creating a simulation that reflects the journey of a patient, whether it be a pair of glasses, whether it be a hat, they're putting on a prop.
00:22:24
Kerry Reid-Searl
to remove themselves from being there. But what we don't do so well is debriefing ourselves. We spend a lot of time in debriefing the students and there's frameworks for debriefing students, but sometimes we walk away from those areas and leave the academic without that closure of a debrief.
00:22:46
Kerry Reid-Searl
It's something that I'd really like to chat to you in another environment, Alastair, about our particular modality of mask ed. And I will have another conversation around that and perhaps ah ah another podcast on it because it's such an important area around debrief. So thank you so much for that. I'll move over to the other team members in asking you questions.
00:23:07
Alastair
Well, I love the idea of Masked and i love the idea that we can take that mask off and keep it as a separate entity to ourselves. And probably my next thing I probably have to ask Mel is ah next time there's any Masked happening,
00:23:22
Alastair
Can I come in as actor to actually experience that? That's where I started with healthcare simulation. I started as a paid actor many years ago working in sim. So I know it from the actor's point of view.
00:23:36
Alastair
Yeah, but thanks, Kerry.
00:23:36
Melanie Barlow
Wow, what an experience for the students. That would be that amazing.
00:23:42
Melanie Barlow
So how then do we prepare our students for this?
Active Listening and Empathy Through Improv
00:23:49
Melanie Barlow
And how do we prepare the yeah yeah activity to help them engage and meet the learning objectives?
00:23:57
Alastair
I think we need to explicitly show our students the difference between divergent and convergent thinking. Convergent thinking is where we use techniques to find the answer.
00:24:10
Alastair
Anything that's logic chain, anything that's a left brain activity that's sequential and these types of things. me me Maths is obviously a good example. Two plus two equals four.
00:24:22
Alastair
That's the widely accepted answer of, so that's an example of convergent thinking. So I think firstly, we need to say to our students, hey, look, this kind of a divergent thinking model.
00:24:32
Alastair
There will be a range of answers. We could have multiple conversations about how you're feeling today as a patient. Each of them will be different. They might contain similar core elements, the majority of them, but the words in the moment that come out of your mouth will be unique to you. And that's an improvised conversation.
00:24:53
Alastair
So don't look for the answer, look for a range of possible outcomes. So perhaps that gives students an element of, oh, you know, I've slightly reduced the pressure because there is no perfect response for these sim activities that are based on divergency and an improvised conversation.
00:25:15
Alastair
I would then encourage them again around active listening. And for the students who are playing a patient, I would use the acting technique. It's from Stanislavski.
00:25:27
Alastair
It's called the magic if. And the magic if says, what would I do if that happened to me? So if I'm but playing a patient with a long-term leg injury, how would I feel if that happened to me?
00:25:43
Alastair
I might feel frustrated. i might feel disappointed that I can't run. i might feel ashamed of my injury. Why hasn't it healed? I might feel all of these human emotions. And that comes back to our idea of narrative.
00:25:56
Alastair
Your patient is living a human experience and you're living a human experience too as a healthcare professional. And we're trying to find the best outcome. Yeah, but letting them know that there is no perfect answer for what they're about to do. It's like saying, what should we have for lunch?
00:26:13
Alastair
Sushi, hamburger, sandwich, leftover, stir fry. They're all correct. All of those answers are correct.
00:26:21
Melanie Barlow
So do we give them a guideline like this is what you have wrong with you, and this is the end point we need to get to, but the improvisation is that human emotion to get there.
00:26:36
Melanie Barlow
I think what I really like about that is we're enhancing the skills of active listening, which I think we don't do enough of, and connecting and empathy with the patient, right?
00:26:51
Alastair
Yeah. And that feeling of being heard, you know, someone heard my story. That's got to be so powerful. You know, you look into aged care and things like that where these people live essentially lonely, isolated lives, many of them with perhaps no family contact at all.
00:27:09
Alastair
And then the person who has to, the only person they come into contact with might be an aged care health professional in some capacity, palliative care nurse, whatever it might be. And that's the only person I can tell my story to.
00:27:24
Alastair
and then, you know, it's, it's, it's a, it's a tough gig, but you've got to listen to the story. You might've heard the story multiple times. There might be issues of dementia and the repetition that have content that comes with that.
00:27:40
Alastair
And just listening to the person's story. Yeah. Because the idea of not being heard and the idea of being isolated and alone, that's, that's pretty heavy in itself.
Future Plans for Improv in Education
00:27:56
Kerry Reid-Searl
I think I've met my new hero.
00:28:01
Melanie Barlow
I know he's
00:28:01
Melanie Barlow
Alistair has presented, as I said, the last two years at the Australian Catholic University Simulation Showcase and ah ah the feedback and evaluation has been amazing, so much so that I think you're you're ah presenting again there this year and in Melbourne, Alistair.
00:28:22
Alastair
I've booked my tickets. I'm coming.
00:28:25
Jenny
When's that, Alistair? I'm close to Melbourne.
00:28:28
Alastair
Okay. We're in early ah ah December, Mel. It's on a Wednesday
00:28:32
Melanie Barlow
I think it's the 3rd of December.
00:28:36
Jenny
Alrighty, that's in my diary.
00:28:40
Melanie Barlow
Yeah, yeah. and with that, your workshops, if anyone is interested hiring you run workshops, yeah, are really interactive and good.
00:28:53
Alastair
And look, I ah really prefer being in person. I know there's a huge online element to education, but being in the room, whether it's with a group of healthcare educators and being able to identify magic moments that they have.
00:29:12
Alastair
making them feel good and competent in what for many might be a new area or a new way of thinking about healthcare simulation, that for me is is a little bit more powerful than doing it remotely where I can't connect and I can't see the nuance A lot of what we do is is is very physical and requires immediacy and immediacy and and contact and things like that, just like our students will experience in SIM and just like they'll experience most of them most of the time when they graduate and they're working in hospitals or a clinic or private practice or, you know government agency, whatever it might be.
00:29:57
Melanie Barlow
Well, I mean, we could talk all day about this. It's so interesting. But I think, Kerry, you're right. We have to get Alistair back and have a targeted conversation.
00:30:05
Jenny
Oh, yes, please. Yes.
00:30:08
Melanie Barlow
So thank you so much for joining us today, Alistair. Yeah, super interesting.
00:30:15
Jenny
Now, just before you go, Alistair, the last question we ask all our guests is, because this is simulation happy hour, if you could be anywhere in the world for happy hour, where would that be and what would you be drinking?
00:30:33
Jenny
think thing. think thing. it's think it's thing. a
00:30:33
Alastair
That's a divergent thinking stimulus because you've said happy hour anywhere in the world and I've got a range of possible answers that I can tell you and each of them is really good.
00:30:42
Jenny
I think it's good thing.
00:30:44
Alastair
but i'll I'll keep it just south of Tweed Heads at the Cabarita Surf Club.
00:30:46
Jenny
good thing. I think
00:30:52
Alastair
It's just out on the deck and you can look out, you can see the waves breaking, you can see the headland, you can see people catching a wave and I'd probably have a stone and wood
00:31:04
Alastair
ale of some sort, a frothy schooner, and just, yeah, and just be thankful that there's good things in the world.
00:31:16
Jenny
I can't wait till we meet again.
00:31:18
Melanie Barlow
Yeah, take me there. That sounds great. Well, thank you, Alistair, again. And to listeners, if you have a topic you want us to discuss, you can go to our website at
00:31:38
Melanie Barlow
and send us a message. And we all look forward to having you join us for next happy hour. Thanks, everyone. bye
Outro