När livet står på spel - En teaterkonstnärlig studie av partnerskap i hälso- och sjukvården

Abstract

In this dissertation, two worlds are being engaged – healthcare and the theatrical arts – to investigate how partner-creating processes are established in encounters between patients and professionals in healthcare settings aiming for a more person-centred care. Person‐centred care has, since long, been endorsed by patient organizations and professional bodies as one of a set of core competencies needed to effectively meet the complex challenges facing today's healthcare systems and controlled studies have shown that person-centred care can contribute to measurable changes and positive effects. Such a profound change of approach has, however, proven itself to be ‘easier said than done’, and there is a need for methods and approaches that can contribute to how a partnership between healthcare professionals and patients can be established and maintained. This dissertation builds on experiences from my theatrical practice as director and actor. Two methodological concepts are brought in from the theatre through the Stanislavskian concepts of the Magic If and Given Circumstances which actors and directors use during rehearsals to analyse a playscript. To examine the asymmetry in human interaction in healthcare contexts and what means can be effective in creating partnerships in such situations, three care encounters have been selected and transformed into theatre manuscripts. These scripts are explored with the help of actors who have taken the roles of healthcare professionals and patients in staged readings, and finally these actors are also interviewed alternately in the first and third person. The model developed in the thesis is inspired by the philosophical anthropology and critical hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur and, as such, the work of interpreting a role in a theatrical context, characterised by the actor investigating and testing, in practice, a preliminary understanding of the theatrical situation by performing it, is “read” through the theoretical lens of Ricoeur’s theory of interpretation. Inspired by Kristensson Uggla’s concept laboratory of interpretation, I have chosen to regard the theatre’s rehearsal process and the healthcare encounter dialogues as interpretation labs where the patient-role is being co-created and re-interpreted (thus both discovered and invented) in the collaboration between patients and healthcare professionals during the healthcare encounter.