A full-length reading of the play, Wit, by members of Omahas Blue
Barn Theater, will be held Tuesday, March 20 at 6:30 p.m. at the Omaha
Community Playhouse. This performance is sponsored by the University
of Nebraska Medical Center Alumni Association, the UNMC Professionalism
Committee and the Wit Education Initiative. Three UNMC faculty members
will facilitate a discussion among audience members following the reading.
The entire complement of 601 tickets will be free of charge, but only available
to UNMC students and faculty.
Wit chronicles the experiences of a literature professor stricken With
advanced ovarian cancer. Through her experience of illness and her
treatment in a major cancer research center, the audience is confronted
With many of the challenges faced by dying patients and their doctors.
The Wit Educational Initiative is an innovative medical training program
that uses local theater productions of Wit to educate medical students,
residents, nursing students and other health professionals about the special
needs of terminally ill patients.
The play, written by Margaret Edson, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1999.
It had an extended run on Broadway and toured the United States.
The Wit Education Initiative, funded by a grant from the Fan Fox and Leslie
R. Samuels Foundation in New York, is collaborating with over 30 regional
theaters and medical schools throughout America and Canada to coordinate
Wit performances and discussions.
Recent research has shown that there are serious deficiencies in the
care provided to dying persons, and that medical training does not include
adequate teaching in end-of-life care. Medical training typically does
not provide opportunities for caregivers to reflect on the importance of
communication skills and the power of empathy in caring for terminally
ill patients.
Traditionally, during the Wit programs, medical students, nursing students,
other health professionals and faculty attend the play, and afterwards
participate in small-group discussions. Here, often for the first
time, they are able to:
· gain emotional insight into the patients experience of illness
and death;
· reflect as to how they treat patients at or near the end of
life;
· learn about the physicians role in end-of-life care.
This play is very well written and really captures the essence of the
caregiver/patient relationship and its human complexity, said David Steele,
Ph.D, associate professor in the UNMC department of family medicine, who
has seen a previous performance of Wit. Dr. Steele is one of the facilitators
for the post-reading discussion, along With Cathy Eberle, M.D., associate
professor in the geriatrics section of the department of internal medicine
and June Eilers, Ph.D., adjunct clinical associate professor in the UNMC
College of Nursing and NHS University Hospital clinical nurse researcher..
Wit will be a wonderful experience for UNMC students, Dr. Steele said.
There is nothing like it to really focus on why medical professionals
and care givers must never lose sight of the patient as a person — as
a whole human being — and not just someone to be managed.
The UNMC Professionalism Committee was created by the UNMC Alumni
Association. One purpose of the committee is to provide opportunities
in the area of professionalism that can involve interaction among all of
the disciplines on campus.