You probably know patients who present with entitled attitudes and you may think there’s not much you can do about them. Entitled patients often demand excessive attention and may question your competence when they are not satisfied with how important you make them feel.
By using one or more of the following approaches, you can manage entitled patients respectfully while reducing your risk of stress and burnout.
1. Be on the same ...
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Physicians are bothered by their patient’s fear. One of the worst parts of actually caring is that when other people suffer and especially when they are frightened, you suffer with them. It is bad when the trepidation is about something real, such as a new disease, but it is particularly disturbing when the source of the fear is confusion or bad information.
There are several common sources of inaccurate terrifying data. ...
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“Maybe we shouldn’t urge people to engage in their health care: it sets them up for failure and punishment from their clinicians.”
A senior patient advocate and researcher recently made this comment to a gathering of experts in patient engagement.
For a few minutes, I was inclined to agree with her. I thought back over the previous three months: the passive aggressive (and aggressive-aggressive) responses of some of my clinicians to my ...
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In the business of medicine, one of the brightest hopes is the potential for re-optimizing our spend around what patients want. That’s important because decades of research in the field of shared decision making have shown that when there’s a range of options to treat a condition, informed patients choose less spending and less invasive treatment.
That’s a good thing.
Unfortunately, the University of Chicago press release ...
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Social media has opened a whole new world for patients. Now, information about disease is readily accessible and available to everyone. Certainly, there are issues with reliability and accuracy of internet sources and this can create uneasiness and misunderstanding for both physician and patient.
However, the internet can also provide many new therapeutic possibilities. In particular, online support groups, twitter chats and blogging can provide a positive outlet for patients suffering ...
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You’ve heard all of the advice about backing up your computer regularly, making sure that you have your passwords stored in a safe place, protecting yourself against digital identity theft, but what does that have to do with providing care for a person with special needs?
Let’s count the ways.
First: Resources. Much of the information you need is online, and your personalized data may be password-protected. Anyone who has ever been ...
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When I began to gather my thoughts for this piece, I asked my husband what he thought. It was eye-opening. Even after twelve years of illness, I forget that his life has been impacted as much as mine by my health limitations. This is partly because he’s changed his major task in life to that of caregiver and partly because we can no longer do most of the things we ...
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Medicine is about balancing risk and benefit. Certainly, as healthcare providers, we attempt to provide the best care for our patients based on available evidence. Physicians often are seen as shepherds, helping to guide patients through disease and therapy. As I have mentioned in previous blogs, ultimately medicine will be personalized and tailored to one’s particular genetic make-up. However, the need for a clear discussion of treatment options ...
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The highly charged political debates about reforming American health care have provided tempting opportunities to rename the people who receive health services. But because the impetus for this change has been prompted by cost and quality concerns of health care payers, researchers and policy experts rather than emanating from us out of our own needs, some odd words have been called into service. Two phrases commonly used to describe us ...
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I empathize with people who don’t take an active role in their health care decisions. There are real barriers to any of us really getting engaged: limited information about price and quality, a perpetuated culture of “doctor knows best,” and a daunting and confusing set of rules about coverage. Who wants to think about it?
There are only so many minutes in the day or neurons in the brain. So, we ...
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"A comprehensive and extremely useful roadmap for doctors."
-Eric Topol, MD, author of The Creative Destruction of Medicine
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