Two years into a grant-funded organization-wide implementation, an Alda Center program to improve team communication and combat burnout in healthcare workers shows promising results.
Data analysis is underway, and the evaluation team says qualitative and quantitative longitudinal data demonstrate that the program has produced lasting and positive results in the communication habits of participating healthcare professionals.
“The big ‘why’ is: how can you tell if you’re really making a difference? How many people have to be trained, and how often, to shift their communication and healthcare culture in a meaningful way?” said Elizabeth Bojsza, the Alda-certified facilitator who is the lead designer of the curriculum. “We’re getting close to the answers.”
The Alda Healthcare Experience program was implemented with funding from a cooperative agreement with HRSA, awarded to Stony Brook Medicine to implement resiliency programs for healthcare professionals in the wake of the COVID pandemic. The HRSA agreement was established with funding in conjunction with the passage of the Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act, a federal bill that was recently renewed.
Like all Alda Center programs, this one combines social science research, communication strategy, and improvisational theater techniques to help participants build more effective and engaging communication skills that, in turn, help build healthcare team cohesion and a positive organizational culture.
“Thankfully, the COVID pandemic seems to be behind us, but that global crisis helped to make incredibly clear the immense pressures and stresses facing our healthcare professionals,” said Laura Lindenfeld, executive director of the Alda Center and dean of Stony Brook University School of Communication and Journalism. “This program is designed to help mitigate at least some of those pressures and offer much-needed support to this critical workforce.”
Since the agreement was awarded in 2022, nearly 500 people from across Stony Brook Medicine have participated in the program, which includes a two-hour in-person training followed by an online booster session. Participants included physicians, nurses, administrators, therapists and other healthcare professionals. The program has been offered exclusively at Stony Brook Medicine.
Many of the participants also elected to participate in the program evaluation, including surveys and interviews before, immediately after, and months or more after the program’s two sessions. The evaluation team’s goal was to determine through an empirically backed rigorous study what impact had been made by it.
“The principles of scientific inquiry and holding very rigorous scientific standards in healthcare — we do that for drugs that will be given to people. Of course this is not a drug; it’s a healthcare workforce development offering which usually is aligned with an organization’s strategic plan and business objectives,” said Dr. Susmita Pati division chief of Primary Care Pediatrics at Stony Brook Medicine as well as chief medical advisor for this project. “When people make business decisions they rarely hold them up against such high levels required within science fields where evaluations are concerned so what we’re doing here should stand out because there aren’t many similar examples around.”
In addition Bojsza & Pati were joined by others on their evaluative team including Heidi Preis (research assistant professor) Clare Whitney (associate professor) Xia Zheng(assistant professor). Together they’ve published preliminary findings already available across several journals like Health Communication Academic Medicine Journal Of Communications In Healthcare Communications Centre Journal BMC Medical Education presented multiple times locally plus further away too preparing next steps alongside future chapters awaiting peer-reviewed publications presentations exploring potential wider rollouts
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