Stethoscope Stage Shines A Light on Maternal Health

FORT WORTH – Tears rolled down the face of Makaela Mosely, a theatre major at TCU, as she ended a powerful monologue about the loss of a child due to a rare birth defect called Trisomy.

The audience sat stunned in silence. Then, applause and cheers erupted inside TCU’s PepsiCo Recital Hall.

“I actually have a former patient that comes and speaks to students about infant loss because she lost a child,” said April Bleich, M.D., Chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine at Texas Christian University.

Dr. Bleich was in the audience and participated in a discussion panel following the performances at the 2024 Stethoscope Stage Play Festival hosted by the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU and produced by Theatre TCU.

“We’re good friends but it’s fascinating to hear her birth story versus my perspective which is purely from a medical perspective,” Dr. Bleich said.

This year’s Stethoscope Stage focused on maternal health. Burnett School of Medicine faculty and staff and Theatre TCU selected 15 monologues and short plays that were performed during the festival. This unique national play festival was created by Ayvaunn Penn, MFA, Assistant Professor in the TCU Theatre Department. Penn created the festival during the COVID-19 pandemic and was inspired by the recent advent of narrative medicine in medical school curriculum.

“Stethoscopes are instruments used to closely and carefully listen to the heart, and that is exactly what transpires here at Stethoscope Stage,” Penn said. “We are dedicated to facilitating open and honest conversations between patients and medical care providers both seeking truth, to be heard, and understood.”

Throughout the festival, there were a range of stories from women of all ages, cultural backgrounds and life experiences. Infant and maternal health has been a topic of discussion in Texas as infant and maternal mortality rates have risen since 2020 in a recent study released by the Texas Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee and Department of State Health Services.

Getting the opportunity to immerse yourself in a patient’s experience in this way is helpful for a health care provider, according to Sarah Morrow, CNM, Director of Nurse Midwives Hospitalist Group at Baylor, Scott & White All Saints Medical Center Fort Worth.

“I’m never going to get that kind of feedback from someone I’m seeing,” Morrow said. “If I can see it from other patients, even if it’s in a theatre or theoretical perspective, I can be very introspective on what my interaction looks like so that I can change in the future.”

Following the performances Dr. Bleich, Morrow, and Elizabeth Slear, MS-3, president of the OB/GYN Student Interest Group at Burnett School of Medicine, discussed the importance of communication between health care providers and patients.

“This definitely opens your eyes to how things can be interpreted,” Dr. Bleich said. “It helps to remind you to slow down and use different terminology and things that you know the patient can understand.”

Slear, who plans to apply to OB/GYN residency next year, has spent a good portion of her medical school training with patients under the guidance of faculty physicians. Understanding a patient’s story and whole experience is critical to providing great care, she added.

“It really makes you think about what you could do differently to improve their experience and help explain things more to help ease some of that anxiety,” Slear said.