Encouraging empathy in tense interactions between nurses and patients
Biomedical visualization alumni and faculty create videos to help address $18 billion problem for hospitals
The Silent Exchange
Copy
A collaboration between UIC College of Nursing, UIC College of Applied Health Sciences and Little Company of Mary Medical Center in Evergreen Park is encouraging empathy to address a growing number of negative interactions between some patients and nursing staff.
BRIDGeS (Building Resourceful Interactions Despite Grief and Stress) offers patients and providers short, animated videos depicting stressors that can lead to workplace violence in hospitals. Utilizing findings from a 2022 community health needs assessment of cultural and communication barriers affecting nursing staff and patients, the BRIDGeS team is tackling the topic of nurse burnout, which has worsened due to staffing shortages, documentation burden and increased violence at work.
Carolyn Dickens, UIC College of Nursing clinical assistant professor, and Eileen Knightly, vice president and chief nursing officer at LCMMC, are co-principal investigators on the grant, funded by the Community Health Advocacy program. Faculty and alumni from AHS also collaborated on the project, including Leah Lebowicz ’12 MS BVIS, clinical associate professor and biomedical visualization program director, and alumni Leah Balsan ’24 MS BVIS and Susie Hammons ’24 MS BVIS.
“There are no research-based solutions for the violence against nurses that’s occurring, or even incivility against nurses,” says Dickens. “How do you address this so we can retain the nursing workforce, attract new talent and have a great patient experience?”
Part of the solution, Knightly said, is teaching clinicians how to use empathy and meet a patient where they are.
The first set of videos BRIDGeS has produced depict a tense exchange between a nurse, a patient and the patient’s daughter from two perspectives. From the loved one’s perspective, the nurse came into her dad’s hospital room after a day full of anxiety and logistical stress and heaved a heavy, annoyed sigh, as if her family’s case were an inconvenience. From the nurse’s perspective, the patient reacted unfairly to a brief physical sign of exhaustion after a chaotic morning treating patients.
It’s human nature, Knightly said, to meet hostility with hostility, “because it’s a fight (or) flight situation and your body naturally does that.”
But “that’s the complete wrong answer,” she said. “So how do we teach that? How do we remind people?”
The BRIDGeS team began by examining provider-patient interactions and dissecting how each side perceived what was happening. It then engaged Lebowicz and BVIS to illustrate both sides of the dynamic. Alumni Balsan and Hammons created the animated storyboards based on interview data.
Dickens said the videos, which feature sound effects but no words, are meant to draw people into the situation more effectively than “two-dimensional signs asking people to be respectful” can.
Links and QR codes to videos are included in patient folders and shared with nurse leadership throughout the UI Health and OSF HealthCare systems. Knightly and Dickens eventually would like to expand the project to other hospitals as well. The issue of nurse burnout and incivility is a growing and expensive concern around the country, affecting hospital budgets and, most importantly, the quality of care.
This article has been edited for length and clarity by Emily Parenti-Lopez.