The Corps of Discovery
Yello dearest Readers! Another exciting week commences now. Events this week are usual business plus I will be recording an episode for the EMSIMPROV podcast hosted by the Journal of Emergency Medical Services. I have had several discussions with the host Eric Chase over the last few months and I am very excited to discuss more. This will be the first time I am on a podcast. Tune in to hear me yell and scream about whatever group you are against!
Getting Ready for Being on a Podcast
Of course, I am kidding, I will be talking about the topics I have been writing about in this venue, namely healthcare, improv, and improv for healthcare providers. Eric asked me to be on the podcast around the end of February. We had several discussions in between then and now, but at some point, I realized I needed to be clearer in my discussion of these topics. That invitation was actually the straw that broke the camel’s back and spurred on this daily writing habit. I had been thinking about how to put Healthcare Improv’s activities out into the world more, I had just finished a book, Bird by Bird by Ann Lamott, that discussed writing daily and its benefits, and I was just about to start a busy month on service and three workshops.
The invitation to be on the podcast was what brought it all together to begin this daily writing practice. As I write quite frequently, the ideas and benefits found within improv are mostly self-evident to me. This writing has helped me break down why improv has served me so well. I have also written that people usually fall into three different camps in their initial response to healthcare providers learning improv: one group loves it and immediately sees the benefit, one group is open to the idea but needs more data/needs to be convinced, and one group sees it as nothing more than a distraction. The amount of people in the group that love it whole heartedly already and the group that see it as a distraction are about the same, so the focus is on the group of people that just need a little convincing to be open to more exploring the benefits of improv. This daily writing has helped me communicate with that group more effectively. The daily writing has done that because I have explored my own thinking of these ideas, like how specifically improv has made me more empathetic, how improv has made me a better physician, or how improv has made my work more meaningful. My goal is to explain how the practice of some seemingly silly activity in a workshop is able to bring laughter to the group in that moment and then to make the practice of being a healthcare provider more meaningful in the days that follow. The daily writing has felt like I was mapping out an uncharted area that is known to exist and is beautiful, but people are comfortable in their current locations with no need to explore this wonderful land. If I can describe the beauty and bounty that can be found in this land along with the opportunity it presents, perhaps more people will take up the journey to explore what improv can bring to their life. As I write, I start to see the connections between ideas and the relationship to each other. How is Empathy related to Listening and how are they both related to Emotion. I am making a map of these ideas. Each breakthrough in understanding that I have is finding a lost city in this territory. People like Eric (too many others to name here as well) are my guides in the journey as he describes parts of the territory that he has seen and what else is out there. This daily writing has been great preparation to go on to the podcast to describe my map of this territory. I can’t go on the podcast and just say that there is a mountain over here and it's near a river that is beautiful. I need to describe canoeing up the Missouri river, the shade of the cottonwood trees, and the ever-expanding land beyond that was being pushed down by the late-summer, evening sun. It is unlikely I will speak as descriptively on Thursday but my daily writing habit will hopefully allow a more clear vision of how the practice of improv can solve some of healthcare’s most urgent issues.
Bonus Quiz!
Bonus points if someone can name the inspiration for the title, the name of the map used as the picture, and why each might have been chosen! Click on one of the social things above and let me know!