“When I had evening shift in the hospital, my colleagues often grumbled that it always took me for so long,” says nurse Marleen Eikelenboom. “I always sat down next to my patients to ask what their day had been like. I was five minutes with one, with the other fifteen. I noticed that people felt more relaxed and seen as a result. Unfortunately, it is not always accepted in healthcare if you take that time for people.”
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Marleen worked ‘on the bed’ for fourteen years and is now a nursing teacher and researcher at the Relational Care Lectorate of the Haagse Hogeschool. She leads the Troostwijs project there. Nursing students from the HBO education collaborated with MBO students from the ROC Mondriaan on a study in which they asked the elderly what they experienced as comforting in healthcare. The initiative came from Imma Zandbergen, who, after she became seriously ill in 2016, became fascinated by the theme of comfort.
Don’t solve everything
“What I experienced as comforting is that my doctor also became light emotional when she gave me the diagnosis,” says Imma. “Others may find it unprofessional, but for me the distinction between care provider and patient fell away. In healthcare, the emphasis is on making people better and solving problems, but as far as I am concerned there may be more room for the things that you cannot change.”
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When comforting, many people think of drying tears or giving a hug, but according to Marleen this is not what comfort is about. “It can certainly help, but with a hug you are actually still busy resolving something. Removing someone’s grief should never be the goal. Let the grief be there, because often someone else does not want you to take it away. Simply being present, seeing someone: that is often soothing.”
Few seconds
According to Imma Zandbergen, the study of the students showed that often no long conversations are needed at all. “It is in very small moments. For example, a woman told how the anesthesiist, before he brought an infusion, had stroked her hand a few times. Years later she was still emotional about this, while that person took that person at most a few seconds. In the end there is no right or wrong, you learn your own Troost language in practice.”
She emphasizes that the research is not a call for people working in healthcare to do better. “A lot of comfort is already offered, but caregivers are often not assessed on it. They are also aware of this in the Nursing course. Students said to me:” We don’t get any credits to reflect on feelings “. With this project we want to make people aware that it is an important part of this profession.”
Intercondence
According to Marleen, this realization is extra important now that more and more care technology is being used. “With that you can partly overcome the shortage of caregivers, but comfort is about humanity. Being there. A robot cannot.”
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“The tasks of the nurse are increasingly shifting to only the ‘medical tricks’, in which comfort ends up with social workers, cleaners, physiotherapists and everyone who has only time. Sin, because people choose this profession because of a piece of meaning. If I had known how more valuable my compassion was for patients,” I was after a piggered moments “”
‘Humanity appears in the consolation’
The Troostwijs project led to the bundle composed by Imma Zandbergen What is comfort? With 19 conversations with healthcare professionals, experiential experts and researchers. Among them psychiatrist Dirk de Wachter who describes it as follows: “Comfort is about the proximity of fellow human beings. Being essentially present, touching, physically too. As a psychiatrist I always thought that, but also as a patient I have experienced it so real. Troost is not something existing. In the consolation, humanity appears.”
The bundle can be downloaded for free via dehaagsehogeschool.nl/onderzoekas well as a toolkit with work forms with which everyone, from healthcare professional to informal caregiver, student or ‘normal person’, can look for the commerce in themselves.