Yes, and Care… Improv-Based Tools for Empathy and Emotional Resilience 

Learning Objectives

• Explain how core principles of applied improvisation (listening, empathy, collaboration, presence, and adaptability) align with best practices in hospice and palliative care communication. 

• Demonstrate techniques for high-quality, active listening that create space for patients and families to share their stories during serious illness and end-of-life conversations. 

• Apply improvisation-based strategies to enhance psychological safety and collaboration within interdisciplinary care teams. 

• Recognize how presence, curiosity, and adaptive communication can reduce emotional strain and support clinician resilience. 

• Integrate concrete, action-oriented communication behaviors into daily clinical practice without increasing emotional or cognitive burden. 

Description

• Hospice and palliative care professionals are asked to show up with empathy, clarity, and presence in some of the most emotionally complex moments of care. These conversations matter deeply—but they can also be exhausting, especially when clinicians are expected to navigate uncertainty, grief, and strong emotions without clear, practical tools for how to respond in the moment. 

• This interactive keynote introduces "applied improvisation for healthcare" as a practical, arts-informed approach to strengthening communication, collaboration, and resilience in hospice and palliative care settings. Drawing on over a decade of medical improv education and the presenter’s artist-in-residence work at Mayo Clinic’s Dolores Jean Lavins Center for Humanities in Medicine, the session reframes improv not as performance or comedy, but as a disciplined practice of listening closely, responding authentically, and creating meaning together. 

• Participants will explore how core improv principles—such as active listening, empathy, collaboration, curiosity, and adaptability—closely mirror the values already at the heart of high-quality palliative care. Through guided experiential exercises, real-world examples, and reflective discussion, attendees will practice simple, concrete communication behaviors that support patient-centered conversations, strengthen interdisciplinary teamwork, and help clinicians stay present without becoming emotionally depleted.