Alda Center healthcare program shows promise at Stony Brook Medicine

Two years into a grant-funded organization-wide implementation, an Alda Center program to help 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 the 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, in an empirically-backed rigorous study, the impact of the program.

"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 and the Alda Center's chief medical program advisor. "When people make business decisions, they rarely hold them to a scientific rigorous standard. So what we're doing with the evaluation is relatively rare; I think that's an important distinction."

In addition to Bojsza and Pati, the evaluation team includes Dr. Heidi Preis, research assistant professor in the obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive medicine at the Renaissance School of Medicine; professor Dr. Clare Whitney, associate professor of nursing; and Xia Zheng, assistant professor of mass communication.

Together, they have already published preliminary findings in several journals, including Health Communication, Academic Medicine, Journal of Communication in Healthcare, Communication Center Journaland BMC Medical Education. They also presented several times at Stony Brook as well as at other universities, healthcare institutions and scientific organizations. The team is preparing for the next chapters of the Alda Healthcare Experience: additional peer-reviewed scientific publications and presentations, and exploring future paths to offer the program to other healthcare professionals.

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