PC1247: Curiosity: An Advanced Communication Skill for Healthcare Professionals Who Speak up for Patient Safety

Background: Expressing curiosity about others’ perspectives is an important communication strategy for healthcare professionals when addressing patient safety concerns. Curiosity in this context signals to the listener the speaker’s desire to learn for the benefit of promoting teamwork and team communication. Determining how healthcare professionals’ words and intentions align with their expressions in speaking up informs individual and team training on this essential skill.

Methods: In this mixed methods study, healthcare professionals were recruited from a large healthcare network to complete an online module with interactive cases reflecting common clinical situations in which patient safety might be at risk. The activity prompted learners to write phrases they would use to speak up for patient safety concerns. Subsequently, learners matched their phrases with a communication strategy from a suite of predetermined strategies. Using NVivo software [QSR International], experts in communication and qualitative research conducted content analyses of the transcripts of textual entries and developed and refined thematic codes with a focus on the strategy of “expressing curiosity”. The following key attributes reflecting curiosity in all participants’ typed responses including the ones participants designated as the strategy of “expressing curiosity” include: directly stating curiosity, wondering about next best steps, exploring others’ opinions, and asking direct questions.

Results: 101 healthcare professionals (Table 1) provided 808 responses during the training. Only 55 (7%) of responses were identified by expert analysis as representing “curiosity”. However, participants identified 237 (29%) statements as “express curiosity”. Participants’ perceptions agreed with experts in 29 (53%) responses but they mis-identified their statements as using curiosity in 208 (88%) responses. Thematic analysis revealed six commonly utilized approaches to expressing curiosity as a means to advocate for patient safety concerns (Table 2).

Conclusion: Using curiosity is an underutilized communication skill among healthcare professionals in addressing patient safety concerns. Healthcare professionals may overestimate their own ability to demonstrate curiosity as a speaking up communication strategy. Training healthcare professionals to use curiosity as a speaking up skill could address various issues in interpersonal communication surrounding patient safety concerns. There are distinct approaches to applying curiosity to patient safety situations which can inform future communication training programs.