By offering several modules to students in healthcare training programs that focus on learning through play, the University of Namur’s Faculty of Medicine is setting itself apart in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. These methods, which educational coordinator Hélène Givron explored in her dissertation, place communication at the heart of the learning process.
There are some things you can’t learn from books. Universities know this well—they always set aside part of the curriculum for hands-on work. But beyond knowledge and know-how, there’s a third dimension that’s rarely taught in a practical way: interpersonal skills. Yet listening to others and being able to convey a message are skills that can be learned! And play can be a powerful tool for transmitting this knowledge.
Hired in 2016 by UNamur to complete her dissertation after studying clinical psychology, Hélène Givron, a member of the TRANSITIONS Research Institute, was tasked with teaching third-year medical students about the doctor-patient relationship as part of Professor Martin Desseilles’ medical psychology course. “After reading extensively on the existing literature about caregiver-patient communication, I realized that simply teaching them the theory wasn’t going to make them better communicators,” she explains. “We needed to use experiential learning, particularly through simulation. That’s how I became interested in more active teaching methods.”
The ideal approach would have involved having students interact with actor-patients, so they could get as close as possible to their future reality, but class sizes make such a system impossible. “So I decided to use role-playing exercises, in which students took turns playing the roles of both doctor and patient,” explains Hélène Givron. “The exercise was very well received by the students, who were essentially taking on the role of a doctor for the first time! And the literature showed that putting themselves in a patient’s shoes also helps develop their empathy.”
Each simulation is filmed, allowing students to review their performance and reflect on what they did and how to improve their communication. “This is a very important moment, which can have detrimental consequences for students if it isn’t led by properly trained individuals,” warns the psychologist. “Even though it’s just a simulation, it deeply immerses students in what will be their future profession. We mustn’t let any of them, faced with a poorly supervised debriefing, conclude that they’ll be a bad doctor.”
To avoid this situation, Hélène Givron helped develop an interuniversity training program specifically designed for simulation instructors: “The role model’s attitude is, in my view, very important, because students learn a great deal by imitation. It would therefore be somewhat absurd to teach them to be good listeners while we ourselves are being judgmental during a debriefing. We must embody what we teach.”
Due to its positive evaluation, this communication workshop is now mandatory for all third-year medical students. Using a simulated clinic designed to closely mirror reality, students first practice welcoming a new patient before tackling more complex situations. “We put them in very specific situations, such as managing a patient under intense stress or delivering bad news,” explains Hélène Givron. “The whole point is to teach them to hone their listening skills and learn to read what patients aren’t saying by observing their nonverbal behavior.”
“This program has since been enhanced with an escape game, created by Milena Jarosik and Sophie Evrard from Hénallux University with the goal of raising students’ awareness about addressing domestic and spousal violence,” the psychologist continues. “The debriefing is led by practitioners in the field who can share their real-life experiences on this topic.”
Medical students aren’t the only ones to benefit from this type of teaching, by the way: “Pharmacy students have access to a teaching pharmacy, which allows them to gain hands-on experience interacting with patients,” explains Hélène Givron. “All role-playing exercises are also filmed, because we learn a lot by watching ourselves.”
And recently, thanks to a Punch project (Namur University Pedagogy in Transition) from the Faculty of Education and Training, and with the help of Christine Laurent, a public health physician and educational games specialist, the psychologist has also been able to set up a play-based learning workshop focused on interprofessional communication. “In recent years, my courses have expanded to include other professions, such as nursing students and midwives,” she explains. “But I remained frustrated by working in silos, even though the literature shows that 70% of medical incidents occur due to communication issues.”
The psychologist therefore decided to create a game in which communication between different professions is the only way to progress. “In the game, students face a situation involving a patient who is absent but needs to receive care,” she explains. “We cover all the skills associated with teamwork and leadership.”
That said, while all these workshops take the form of games, they are nonetheless rigorously supervised. “We’ve adopted a very scientific approach to this learning,” argues Hélène Givron. “After implementing them, we studied their effects and the students’ attitudes to ensure they didn’t have any negative consequences. All of this was reported during faculty meetings where our actions were discussed. Finally, we have all been trained in this approach, which makes it all the more robust.”
In this way, we bring to life the statement by psychologist and child development specialist Francesco Tonucci: “All of life’s important learning takes place through play.”
We have taken a very scientific approach to these learning methods. We have studied their effects and the students’ attitudes to ensure they do not have any negative consequences. We have all been trained in this approach, which makes it all the more robust.
In addition to game-based learning, Hélène Givron’s dissertation had some more unexpected implications: “We found that when students were anxious or experiencing burnout, they were much less interested in communication. After all, how can you muster the energy to listen to someone else when you’re at the end of your rope yourself?” This led the researcher to develop practical exercises focused on student well-being. “We provide them with strategies for regulating their emotions that they can use for themselves, but also to recognize when their patient isn’t doing well. It’s all intrinsically linked.”
This article is from the "Tomorrow Learn" section of Omalius magazine, Issue #41 (June 2026).
