Wit for health care profession students and faculty. The play will be performed by the Wit cast of the Denver Center Theatre Company. The reading is part of the Wit Educational Initiative, an innovative medical training program that uses local theater productions of Wit to foster greater understanding within the medical community about the special needs of dying patients.
Wit chronicles the experiences of a literature professor stricken by advanced ovarian cancer.
Through the professor's experience of her 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 caregivers. Recent research has shown that medical and other health care professional schools may not adequately prepare professionals to treat dying people. During the Wit educational initiative, health profession students and faculty attend the play, and are then led through small-group discussions. The interpersonal, emotional and spiritual issues faced by dying patients are not amenable to the didactic approach. It's extremely difficult to teach, in the classroom, the personal development that patients go through when they're dying.