Michele Fleiger, MFA
sPEAKPERFORMANCE :: applying theatrical principles to communications
CALL :: 1-780-951-0991

FOR PROFESSIONALS



Michele facilitates communication workshops for medical students, residents and visiting scholars
Workshops designed to encourage interdisciplinary collaborative practice by fostering an understanding of your own narrative and the narrative of others.
 

Since 2010, Michele has been instructing Communicating Care workshops for medical students, residents and visiting scholars. Inspired by medical student Alim Nagji, and in cooperation with Dr. Pamela Brett-MacLean, Director, Art and Humanities in Health and Medicine at the University of Alberta, Michele's workshops seek to assist medical students in their ability to provide empathic care.

Through interactive theatre exercises participants learn to:
1) appreciate multiple perspectives at play in clinical encounters
2) recognize and understand nonverbal communication cues
3) engage in honest self-reflection to enhance understanding, empathy and responsiveness to others
4) strategize to authentically engage with others and feel more at ease interacting with others

Feedback from participants:

“I think this should be incorporated into our curriculum. It is very beneficial I think, it would be helpful to others.”

“Michele was an excellent facilitator. Very inspiring.”


Michele was the principal author of the article Performative Reflection: Use of a Longitudinal Theater Elective to Promote Relational-Responsive Awareness among Medical Students included in the following publication:

​The Kent State University Press

Keeping Reflection Fresh
A Practical Guide for Clinical Educators

Literature & Medicine, Recent Releases

Allan Peterkin and Pamela Brett-MacLean
Top educators offer useful approaches to reflection in health professional education

Curriculum committees at health professional schools are determined that faculty engage students in reflection. Reflective practice invites students to inquire into their own thoughts, biases, assumptions, feelings, and behaviors and to reconnect with their own sense of purpose and commitment to their work. In Keeping Reflection Fresh, practitioners, educators, and students in medical humanities, bioethics, nursing, emergency medicine, geriatrics, psychiatry, family medicine, surgery, medical education, and other fields join artists, musicians, poets, and writers to present an illuminating and innovative collection of provocative essays. The contributors—including Louise Aronson, Jay Baruch, Alan Bleakley, Rita Charon, Jack Coulehan, Sayantani DasGupta, Therese Jones, and Delese Wear, among many others—offer insights, guidance, and strategies designed to inspire new concepts, connections, and conversations, enrich practices, and stimulate scholarly inquiry.

Keeping Reflection Fresh demonstrates the care and commitment of internationally recognized educators who are working toward reimagining health education and reinspiring health care. It will be welcomed by a broad readership of educators, students, practitioners, and lifelong learners across the healing professions, social sciences, humanities, and artistic disciplines.

www.kentstateuniversitypress.com/2016/keeping-reflection-fresh

We need to get ourselves in another mode which is why the arts were invented: to show you the single human being is overwhelmingly powerful. And when a single human being figures out they are part of a community, it is unstoppable.
 ~ Peter Sellars ~ 



I have worked with:
University of Alberta Departments of Drama, Music, Medicine, and Science, the International Student Centre, Portage College, Red Deer College, Concordia University, Alberta Innovates Health Solutions (AIHS) and Alberta Health Services.