Presented By: Princy Louis Palatty, Amrita School of Medicine
Co-Authors: Russell Franco D'Souza, UNESCO
Surapaneni Krishna Mohan, Panimalar Medical College Hospital & Research Institute
Mary Mathew, Kasturba Medical College, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE)

Purpose
Lectures have shown to be an ineffective pedagogical tool to inculcate moral values and bioethics in the medical curriculum. In this study, we have used participatory theatre (street play) as a novel as a prototype to teach the Universal Declaration of Bioethics and Human Rights (UDBHR) bioethical principles.

Methods
This study was conducted in two stages. Medical student volunteers were introduced to the principle of Non-Discrimination and Stigmatization and then requested to prepare the script and perform a street play to demonstrate this principle. After the performance, the students were divided into three groups as follows: i) Students who were observers, ii) Student performers who participated in the  focal group discussion and iii) Student performers who participated in the qualitative reflection following their performance. A qualitative methodology was chosen with triangulation using Gibb's cycle to analyse the data. All students were provided validated structured questionnaires.

Results
A total of 96% of the students agreed that street play was useful to learn the principles of bioethics. The overall assessment of usefulness of participatory theatre to teach these ethical principles was rated as excellent/very good by 78% of the students. The student expressed high approval for the questions pertaining to the theatrical aspects like depiction, relevance, impact, sensitivity, group dynamics, synchronization and clarity.

Conclusions
Participatory theatre is an effective teaching tool in facilitating learning of bioethics principles for medical undergraduates. Learning, unlearning and the evolution of new behaviour as an attitude is the common outcome observed in this study. The students are obligatorily exposed to situations that confronted with opinions, customs and beliefs that were previously not known to them and compel them to think and contend with a myriad of issues that impact them. This method could be a creative alternative to the traditional teaching techniques of teaching bioethics.