Solving Stigma Through POV Simulation: Enhancing Pharmacist Empathy-based Practices With Sickle Cell Disease Patients

Summary

Why This Research Matters (Significance)

1 in 5 of the 50+ million people with chronic pain in the U.S. face stigma when using opioids, especially women and racial minorities. This stigma often comes from pharmacy staff treating chronic pain patients as drug seekers, who then refuse to fill the patient's script, and leave the patient in severe pain. The team has found that having pharmacists watch testimonial videos of sickle cell patients sharing their pain management struggles can help reduce these misconceptions. However, using point of view simulations could be even more effective in fostering empathy among pharmacists. The goal is to create an educational simulation that helps pharmacists better understand and manage pain in sickle cell patients, ultimately improving their care.

What Makes This Research Unique (Innovation) Traditional methods to address biases in healthcare include watching patient testimonials or using expensive actors to play a standardized patient interaction to health professionals. This innovative point of view simulations engage participants' empathy more effectively by playing back what participants told the patient from the patient's point of view and are more accessible by having participants interact with the simulation on the computer any time and any place, rather than organizing a paid actor to visit the hospital. With advancements in artificial intelligence, we can create interactive simulations where virtual patients respond dynamically to questions, making the experience more realistic and impactful.

How Will the Researchers Conduct the Research (Approach)

The researchers will test if point of view simulations can reduce misconceptions among healthcare professionals and improve pain management for sickle cell patients. Here's the plan:

1. Create and Implement the Simulation: Use it as part of the training for pharmacy and hospital staff, as well as nursing and pharmacy students.
2. Survey Participants: Before and after the simulation, participants will take a survey to measure their misconceptions about opioid use.
3. Follow-Up: Six months later, researchers will survey the participants' patients and their managers to see if there's been an improvement in the empathetic care the participants provided.

Conditions

• Stigma

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

point of view simulation

In POV simulations, participants actively engage with a patient looking to fill an opioid script at a community pharmacy setting through the point of view of the pharmacist. Using a "choose your own adventure" branch chain format, our research team has already drafted interaction pathways where participants can respond to the patient with empathy-based practice, act on a common misconception around chronic opioid use, or mislabel the patient as drug seeking. After 3-4 interaction branches, the participants reach a decision to fill the opioid script, deny it, or some variation of delaying the script being filled. The POV simulation then replays the participant's choices back to them from the patient's point of view, revealing that the SCD patient was in genuine pain and engaging participant's empathy as they rewatch their microaggressive and mislabeled drug seeker choices through the patient's POV.

BEHAVIORAL

Control

Participants will watch a hematology educational video unrelated to pain management

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Howard University

  collaborator OTHER

• Fairleigh Dickinson University

  collaborator OTHER

• National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS)

  collaborator NIH

• Ohio State University

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Nicholas L Denton, PhD · Ohio State University College of Pharmacy

Study Design

Allocation

NON_RANDOMIZED

Purpose

HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH

Masking

DOUBLE

Model

CROSSOVER

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2026-05-01

Primary Completion

2026-07-31

Completion

2026-07-31

Countries

• United States

Study Locations