About the different ways to curb violence that comes from waiting
What happens when you take away people's smartphones while they are waiting in line? How can violence be reduced in emergency rooms? Why are some drivers filled with rage when stuck in traffic, while others take it relatively calmly? And is there a way to stay calm even during the nerve-wracking wait? These are some of the questions that arise in the research of Dr. Dorit Efrat-Treister, from the Department of Management at Ben Gurion University.
What is the question? What happens to us when we have to wait?
Dr. Efrat-Treister's field of research is curbing violence that originates from waiting, in which she examines situations in which people may express violence as a result of waiting. Such situations currently take a significant part of our time, when some of them occur while we are waiting with other people in our environment, outside our home. This factor significantly increases the level of competition and vigilance among the people who want to receive the same service. The competition also raises the general stress level in the shared waiting area, which can lead to violent outbursts by those waiting.
This violence can be expressed in different aspects - verbal and physical, and at different levels of severity. A person can express verbal or physical violence towards another person - the service provider or someone waiting in line with him, and can express it in a neutral way that does not hurt others - talking loudly to himself or hitting an object. Sometimes this violence stops within him and erupts only after the waiting state, from another stimulus. Either way, waiting produces violence. The question is what measures can be taken to stop it - and this is what Dorit focuses on in her research.
Dr. Efrat-Treister diagnosed that in order to try and stay calm while waiting, it is better to form concrete thinking than abstract thinking. Thus, for example, it is better for us to think that our friend is late for the meeting we arranged, because he got stuck in traffic (concrete thinking), and not because he tends to underestimate our time (abstract thinking). In the same way, when we are waiting in line for a medical examination, it is better to think that the medical staff is busy now (concrete thinking) and not because the medical system cannot cope with the load (abstract thinking).
One of the most important aspects of Dr. Efrat-Treister's research deals with the waiting of patients in hospitals and medical centers - an unavoidable situation for the vast majority of patients. The combination of waiting and the need for medical treatment, sometimes urgent, when the patient is in pain, causes a particularly great difficulty to contain the waiting time, which sometimes lasts for hours due to the burden on the treating staff. Dr. Efrat-Treister develops tools that may change the perceptions of the waiting patients, with the aim of preventing violence or significantly reducing it.
The combination between waiting and the need for medical treatment, sometimes urgent, when the patient is in pain, causes a particularly great difficulty to contain the waiting time, which sometimes lasts for hours due to the burden on the treating staff
In a study she published together with Dr. Michael Daniels and Prof. Sandra Robinson, and which won a research grant from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Efrat-Treister examined how it is possible to mitigate violence that originates from waiting by changing the concept of waiting from an abstract to a concrete one. She showed that it is possible to significantly reduce violence through changing perceptions, without actually shortening the wait.
In another study, Dr. Efrat-Treister and her research partners examined 226 people who were waiting in line in the emergency room of a large hospital. The researchers located two situations in which there was a decrease in the connection between waiting and violence: the first, when those waiting in line felt that the line was progressing - either according to an electronic board that shows the progressing numbers, or according to a lot of movement around the emergency room; The second, and perhaps more important, occurred when wait staff changed their perception of the medical staff and believed that their wait was due to a heavy workload of the staff who were working hard. When both situations occurred at the same time, the reduction in violence was more significant. Dr. Arik Cheshin, Prof. Anat Rafali, Dr. Dana Harari, Dr. Shira Agassi, Hadar Moriah, and Dr. Hana Adami participated in this study.
"It is very important," says Dr. Efrat-Treister, "that customers see the service providers as those who put a lot of effort into their work. Waiting, and seeing a worker who 'takes his time' and works slowly can be very frustrating."
In another study, carried out together with Prof. Anat Rafali and Hadar Moriah, signs were placed in hospital waiting rooms that explained the way the queue was managed: "The most serious case enters first, not whoever arrived first"; Or they explained the reason for the wait: "Culturing a blood test takes about two hours." In this way, the person understands that he is not waiting for no reason, that no one is bypassing him, which contributes to calming his mood. As part of the study, signs were placed in hospital waiting rooms that explained how the queue was managed: the most serious case enters first, not whoever arrived first. Or they explained the reason for the wait: growing a blood test culture takes about two hours
"The first step in solving the problem," says Dr. Efrat-Treister, "is to put yourself in the other person's shoes. Why is the waiting violent? There can be many reasons, but in most cases he simply does not understand the reason for waiting and feels that he is a 'sucker'. That's why it's important to explain to those waiting the logic behind queue management."
Dr. Efrat-Treister's research led to a decrease of about 40% in the cases of violence in hospitals. In the actions she planned together with Dr. Alon Lisk in a district hospital, the level of satisfaction with the emergency department rose from the last place in Israel to the first in Israel, among all the district hospitals in Israel. The results of the study already show a significant decrease in violence and an increase in patient satisfaction, and Dr. Efrat-Treister hopes that they will serve as a basis for outlining a policy to address the serious problem of violence in hospitals in Israel.
Life itself:
In her youth, Dr. Efrat-Treister was a classical ballet dancer, and in her adulthood I taught ballet in a class for little girls.
For the article on the National Science Foundation website
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