Compassionate Communication Training Rebuilds Connection in a High-Stress Health Care Culture
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Diverging Reports Breakdown
Compassionate Communication Training Rebuilds Connection in a High-Stress Health Care Culture
UC San Diego is leading the way with the fellowship curriculum and with the train-the-trainer program. The Center for Compassionate Communication also offers a two-day workshop, Lead With Compassion. More than 85 health care professionals and artists have graduated from the Sanford Compassionates Communication Academy to date. Applications for the fellowship are accepted on a rolling basis, and the program is open to health professionals, medical educators and teaching artists from within and beyond UC San Diego.
“As a director of wellness for the emergency department, this is such a passion of mine,” said Subramony, who works with other wellness directors to help faculty connect with compassion. “I’ve had providers tell me how much happier they are at the end of a shift after developing that meaningful connection with the patient.”
“UC San Diego is leading the way with the fellowship curriculum and with the train-the-trainer program, and it absolutely is a model that could extend to other institutions and programs,” said Buckholz.
Measuring the impact
The fellowship directors partnered with Amy Vatne Bintliff, Ph.D., an associate teaching professor, and Becca Levine, a doctoral student, both in the Department of Education Studies at UC San Diego, to evaluate the impact of the fellowship on clinicians and to provide an evidence base for their innovative approach. The researchers collected field notes and conducted in-depth interviews with the fellows, which were published in Academic Medicine (see sidebar).
“ An educational intervention like this one aims to help medical professionals tap into the compassion they already have, and into the reasons they entered the medical field in the first place,” said Levine.
Subramony agrees. “Early in my career, I was very much focused on the science of medicine, making sure that I did not make medical errors and seeing as many patients as possible,” she said. “That is still a priority, but I’ve come to learn that the art of medicine is just as important, if not even more important in the long run: developing that connection with a patient and meeting them where they are because we’re all humans, we’re all individuals.”
More than 85 health care professionals and artists have graduated from the Sanford Compassionate Communication Academy to date. Applications for the fellowship are accepted on a rolling basis. The Center for Compassionate Communication also offers a two-day workshop, Lead With Compassion, which covers some of the same curriculum as the fellowship and is open to health care professionals, medical educators and teaching artists from within and beyond UC San Diego.