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reimagining patient-doctor communication through the immersive listening act of opera

Patience

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2022

The Need

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The Creator Team

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The Problem

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We have so much evidence and literature about the problem!

So why is the problem supposedly so hard to solve?

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How prevalent is misdiagnosis today?

Newman-Toker, David E. “Just how many diagnostic errors and harms are out there, really? It depends on how you count.” BMJ quality & safety vol. 34,6 355-360. 19 May. 2025, doi:10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017967

“Misdiagnosis Statistics Statistics: Market Data Report 2025.” Worldmetrics.org, 2025, worldmetrics.org/misdiagnosis-statistics/#sources. Accessed 8 Dec. 2025.

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What is Patience?�A new toolkit for the clinic

What: advocating for recentering patient experience in medical cultures to reduce rate of misdiagnosis

How: utilizing innovative opera Patience (artistic product) in medical education: school, labs, clinics, and conferences

Who: Patience is a non-profit product created by an artistic team for disabled/chronically ill women(+) and their health field professionals

The Solution

Today I am going to speak not only as an artist but as a disabled citizen, a human being who has been wounded by systems meant to heal, but also as a person with the privilege and opportunity to speak to cultural leaders like yourself today here at Yale. While I as an artist can’t change research funding or medical technology, I can do what artists are trained to do and communicate expressively and creatively.

�We suggest that because doctors respond better to data and patients respond better to stories, artists can serve both target audiences in the same room at the same time by combining the two in informed and interactive storytelling. My opera Patience tells the moral fable of a misdiagnosed patient withering away. Our paired-down, intimate, one-woman, multimedia opera is the perfect medium for communicating an effective and memorable story; it uses all the senses yet still draws people in. Text has also proven to be more memorable when association with musical motif or melody. By creating a character that the audience can empathize and interact with directly, we humanize and memorialize the metric nature of misdiagnosis statistics, and gives providers and patients a common language to use to solve this cultural problem together.

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Patience: Partnership-Driven Non-Profit Model�an innovative artistic project drives impactful cultural capital

partner with a medical conference, medical school, or public health department

present an interactive workshop-performance aimed at early-career medical students and their patients

use the opera as a leverage point for patients and providers to talk to each other on neutral ground about their experiences and frustrations (pain points)

measure outcomes such as improvement in empathy or communication from these interactions (solutions)

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Opera: a Multi-Impact Platform

Patients: Advocacy Education

Providers: Listening & Communication Strategies

Public Health Officials: Metric Modality

Philanthropists: Double Impact of Donation

Generational Change

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3 Birds, 1 Stone

Introducing the practice of storytelling arts into medical school curricula would

pedagogically improve communication skills and narrative competency
be a gamechanger for improving school rankings, quality of life, and burnout in MD school with mandated productive rest
Harness the power of art beyond entertainment with new, more accessible mediums to transmit medical information

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Proof of Concept

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Work in Progress

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Support has so far included encouragement, feedback, or funds from

producer Beth Morrison
director Brooke O’Hara
composer Missy Mazzoli
composer-conductor Matthew Aucoin
Curtis Institute of Music
Royal Danish Academy of Music
Copenhagen Kulturhuset
Hekhu Ensemble
Dr. Judith Lichtmann and the HAPPY Initiative
PreVision Labs
Tanglewood Music Center
Startup Yale Creative Entrepreneurship Audience Choice Prize
Norwegian Academy of Music

Our Traction

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Scene 1:

Waiting Room

3:32-4:05

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Scene 2:

Two Appointments

9:27-11:11