CAREER: Using Advanced Organizational Technology to Communicate Compassionately

Using advanced information technologies (AIT) in the workplace can expedite information sharing and improve cost efficiency, but can also cause a social disconnection that encumbers compassionate communication, which is vital to health care. Compassionate communication involves noticing the need for compassion and the details of patients’ lives, connecting emotionally and cognitively though empathy and perspective-talking, and responding with effective (non)verbal strategies.

AITs can inhibit (non)verbal communication with patients, and although AITs enable more online interaction, establishing compassion within these venues can be taxing. This project examines how health care workers innovate their communication practices following AIT implementation to practice compassionate communication and patient perceptions on best provider practices.

Because compassion is especially important when serving vulnerable populations, this project studies compassionate AIT use in (a) a federally qualified health center providing care to a poverty-stricken population (b) a high-tech hospital serving higher income patients.

This project addresses the problem technology poses for compassionate health care communication by interviewing and observing providers and surveying patients to understand their perspectives on how new AITs both constrain and afford patient-provider communication and relationship-building. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews will allow providers to reflect on and explain their AIT behaviors, and video observation tools will expose providers’ AIT behaviors and patients’ responses.

The researcher will complete 100 video observational hours at two health care organizational sites, 100 hours observing current in-person communication workshops at these sites, 60 provider interviews, and 300 patient surveys. Results will be used to create a compassionate communication intervention for providers at each research site, to design an online continuing medical education, and to generate an undergraduate course for pre-health students, equipping each respective group with skillsets to embrace the increasingly complex interpersonal challenges posed by health AITs.

This project also offers healthcare leaders practical recommendations regarding: (a) (non)effective AIT communicative strategies for serving both low and normal/high literacy populations, and (b) improved AIT designs.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.