LAUSR

As part of our resilience training, we developed an activity called ‘Emotional Speed-Dating.’ At this point in the training, students had been working in groups of 10-15 peers over a period of 4 weeks. We asked the students to build two rows of chairs facing each other. After all students had found a seat, we passed out sheets of paper containing six questions. Students in one row were assigned the role of interviewer and were asked to put the questions to the peer in the row opposite them. After 3 minutes, the interviewers and interviewees switched roles. After another 3 minutes, all students moved one seat to the right, and the person in the outermost seat moved to the empty chair at the beginning of the opposite row. Then the interviewing process began again and roles continued to switch every 3 minutes. After four rounds, the process was ended and the chairs moved into a circle to allow for reflection on the experience as a whole group. This approach allows us to offer guidance to the students in the form of questions without intruding as facilitators. The questions we developed are ordered in ascending emotional difficulty, and students are repeatedly instructed not to change the order of the questions. Various educational options can be developed from this exercise, such as how to deal with emotions and understanding the relationship between patients’ and physicians’ emotions. The questions provided to participants were: