The Queen Sylvia Nursing Award was bestowed upon Adrian Nowakowski, a nurse at the University Clinical Centre of the Medical University of Warsaw, for his work on a tool designed to help healthcare workers and their dementia patients communicate.

“I took on the communication challenges that medical staff encounter, especially nurses caring for dementia patients,” Nowakowski explained. “I developed a simulator using artificial intelligence that helps in learning and practicing effective communication.”

He explained that when he started working after qualifying as a nurse, he was unprepared for the communication challenges he faced with dementia patients, which is why he developed the system primarily to benefit nursing students. The concept is for students to practice communicating with an AI tool that imitates the communication of dementia patients, for example by refusing medication. The student then has to persuade the ‘patient’ to take their pills.

“You need to work out certain techniques, to understand the person from their point of view – in order to establish conflict-free dialog,” Nowakowski said. “If we don’t know the patient has dementia and we try to talk to them as if to a healthy person, we run into big problems.

“I created the appropriate prompts, or instructions, and introduced them to various artificial intelligence models responsible for ‘vision’ or text processing,” he explained.

The ‘phantom’ thus created is capable of perceiving its surroundings in the same way as a dementia patient, processing information and providing responses in the same way.

Nowakowski said one of the most important qualities the system teaches is the patience required to communicate effectively with people suffering from dementia. After each practice session, the AI tool analyzes the student’s performance, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of their strategies.

The Queen Sylvia Nursing Award is a grant set up in 2013 by Swedish Care International for nurses and nursing students with an emphasis on dementia care. Its winners receive EUR 6,000 and the chance to complete an internship.

The award is granted in Sweden, Finland, Poland, Germany, Lithuania, and Brazil, as well as at the University of Washington in Seattle. The award will be presented to this year’s winners at the Grand Ceremony at the Royal Palace in Stockholm on September 12.