International conference day one

On the first day of the International Conference on Communication in Healthcare I got some great feedback on my research on how nurses’ religious beliefs impact how they communicate with patients about end-of-life care. Here are some of the highlights of the comments and feedback I received:

• Maybe the intrinsically religious people are more prepared to have discussions with patients about end-of-life care. These people know how important religion is in there lives and are therefore prepared to ask about it in their patients lives.
• Some people were surprised by the result that intrinsically religious people are more willing to give patients control. The stereotype would be that very religious people would be more apt to push a certain set of religious beliefs. But there is a difference between dogma and deep intrinsic belief.
• Some people expressed concern about a social desirability bias on the empathy scale, especially among nurses. One way to control for this would be to conduct a study giving nurses the empathy scale and then video tape the nurses in real patient interactions and compare the results.
• The most curious responses seemed to come from my European colleagues. They did not seem to understand why end-of-life care was a religious issue. End-of-life care is certainly more comprehensive in Europe, and in places like the Netherlands, even euthanasia is discussed openly. Some colleagues suggested that religion seems to be more pervasive in American culture than in Europe. Still my European colleagues were very polite and interested in my research. Though one had to keep reminding me to slow down when I was talking, as English was not her first language.

All in all, there seemed to be a good amount of interest in my research and it has renewed my drive to try and get a paper on the topic published in a journal.