Michelle Lobchuk, associate professor in the College of Nursing, recently taught a series of workshops on empathetic communication for health care educators and professionals through the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences’ office of education and faculty development.
A UM alumna, Lobchuk has been with the College of Nursing since 2003. Her research expertise is in empathetic communication, inter-professional team empathy, family caregiving and self-care management.
For the last few years she has worked on a project to improve empathetic communication between health care students and their patients, families and caregivers at the Caregiver Communication Research Environment (CAreLab) at Grace Hospital.
“No one ever taught me to be an empathetic instructor, but it is so key in practicing health care,” Lobchuk said.
Faculty from across the faculty’s five colleges of nursing, medicine, pharmacy, rehabilitation sciences and dentistry took part in the workshops, along with some attendees from other institutions.
“We started with self-awareness,” she said. “That’s the key thing about empathy – you have to be aware of your own biases, prejudices and assumptions of why you interpret things the way you do.”
Among the session topics were teacher empathy and how to receive feedback.
“Our students in health sciences need to know how to receive feedback in a respective manner, especially at the bedside, because sometimes it feels like someone is criticizing,” she said. “It all starts with good role modelling.”
The final session looked at a smartphone app that Lobchuk has been developing with Dr Nicole Harder, associate professor, College of Nursing and Mindermar Professor in Human Simulation, and Dr. Marcia Friesen, dean of the Price Faculty of Engineering.
“COVID has pushed us to be a little smarter in terms of how we use technology, and it has taught us that there are different ways to teach,” she said. “We want the app to be self-directed by the user. It’s one thing to be told how to communicate with people, but it’s another to actually practice it.”
Lobchuk began testing the app with nursing students last year. Since then, she’s approached by researchers at other universities across North America to continue bringing the app to reality.
“I’m still doing some usability testing, but we are getting a lot of interest. Those that teach this are eager for new tools.”
The workshops were held virtually in February and March. Lobchuk said she’d be interested in teaching them again if the interest is there.
“The messaging is so important, especially now.”