Schwartz Rounds provide a safe space for healthcare staff to share many aspects of their work with others. This results in reflections and realisations that enable staff to be more compassionate towards themselves and others.

In this episode, Nathan Illman sits down with Jill Maben to discuss Schwartz Rounds and her evidence-based research about the effect of these rounds on nurses’ well-being. 

Listen and learn in this episode.

KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE

• Making a difference and helping families during their most difficult times is immensely rewarding but it’s not always easy.

• The term Schwartz Rounds was named after a young American lawyer, Kenneth Schwartz who had incurable lung cancer in 1995.

• When medicine can't provide any answers, or has kind of failed, what matters most for patients and families is compassion and empathy.

• Schwartz Rounds help develop more personal knowledge of your emotions and the interpersonal side of the work that you're doing, rather than just the empirical scientific, technical, knowledge that perhaps a nurse might need to have to deliver care.

• What’s unique about nursing work is they are asked to bring and deliver their full selves, emotions, empathy, and compassion all day, every day to every patient.

• Schwartz Rounds are developed to provide a safety net or support mechanism to help people process those emotional, social, and ethical challenges at work.

• The four stages of Schwartz Rounds: Finding the storytellers, preparation of the storytellers, the rounds, and the after-effects.

• It takes time to change culture, but there's a fertile area for conversations to grow and for us to be more compassionate to each other, but also ourselves.

• The Schwartz Rounds touch on many aspects of life and the reflections that happen during these rounds encourage nurses to be more compassionate towards themselves and others.

• Vulnerability builds the bridge to genuine connections.

• In rounds, you allow feelings to come in, and processing them enables different things to grow.

• The more rounds you attend, the more protective it becomes.

• Someone who deeply understands the power of rounds can help spread the word and encourage people to attend them.

• Evidence shows that rounds have more impact on regular attendance.

Today’s Guest:

Jill Maben is a nurse by background and is now a professor of Health Services Research and Nursing at the University of Surrey. She leads a workforce organisation and well-being team. They have several research projects related to nurses’ well-being or healthcare staff’s well-being.

Connect with Jill Maben here:

https://www.surrey.ac.uk/people/jill-maben

https://twitter.com/nursingpolicy

Want to start with Schwartz Rounds? Go to:

https://www.pointofcarefoundation.org.uk/

Website: https://www.nursewellbeingmission.co.uk

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/nursewellbeingmission