Theater and assertiveness in practitioner-patient relationship: general practitioner's feeling

Introduction. The medical therapeutic efficacy is bound to the quality of the patient -practitioner relationship. Assertiveness is a communication concept who tend to optimize this relation. Theatre practice and assertiveness show similarities without an established link between the two of them. In the medical consultation, how does the practitioner theatre practice enable an assertive behaviour? This work aims to gather the feelings of general practitioners regarding the contribution of their practice of a theatrical leisure activity in the patient -practitioner relationship. Method. A qualitative study was conducted with general practitioners, using semi -directed interviews, from November 2020 to April 2021. The analysis was carried out in an inductive approach, and according to the anchored theorizing method. It was based on the encoding of data collected using the NVivo12 (R) software. A triangulation of the encoding was performed. Results. Results highlights similarities between medical practice, assertiveness and theatre practice. Theatre work on emotions, verbal and non-verbal expression seems to apply to an authentic physician -patient relationship and promote the patient -centred approach. Discussion. Theatre practice seems to help promote the development of physician -patient interaction, respecting Assertiveness criteria.