In healthcare, employee engagement can be improved by several strategies. One of the main obstacles is poor internal communications, which can lead to disengagement and dissatisfaction. To improve employee engagement, it is essential to listen to employees, offer recognition opportunities, quantify engagement, prioritize employee safety and well-being, focus on patient experience, strengthen leadership teams, invest in succession planning, and implement mentorship programs.
One way to enhance employee engagement in healthcare is to start from the top and invest in your leadership team. Great leaders help maintain a meaningful connection with team members and staff, establish clear communication, and recognize employees for their contributions.
Healthcare workforce planning can help resolve some medical staffing issues, but organizations also need to consider other areas to ensure strong employee engagement and retention. Onboarding new employees involves training, educating, and getting them comfortable in their new position.
To improve employee engagement, leaders should lead with optimism, incorporate various healthcare employee engagement ideas into their plan, and communicate and implement the plan effectively. Engaged employees are more willing to learn new skills and be innovative, adaptable, resilient, team-oriented, and open to diverse perspectives.
Reducing information overload, investing in employee recognition, and prioritizing employee wellbeing can drive higher employee engagement. Engaged teams are more likely to exhibit strong communication practices and a deep commitment to their roles, leading to safer patient handling.
In conclusion, improving employee engagement in healthcare requires a combination of strategies, including listening to employees, offering recognition opportunities, quantifying engagement, prioritizing employee safety and well-being, focusing on patient experience, strengthening leadership teams, investing in succession planning, and implementing mentorship programs.
📹 How to Engage Your Employees in Your Health and Wellness Programs
Listen in to this episode of Paychex PULSE, as Director and CEO of Virgin Pulse, Chris Michalak, talks with Rob Parsons about …
How do you increase nursing staff morale?
Here are six ways to boost the morale of your nurses: … — No blood pressure cuffs.
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How do you engage staff internally?
Know your employees’ preferences. … Make content more personal. … Share content through the right channels. … Enable social interactions for more engagement. … Make content more real. … Think about your mobile workers. … Use AI to get more readers and be more efficient. … Ask employees for feedback. One of the top priorities for internal communications and HR professionals is creating more engaging content. It’s hard to get employees to read and engage with internal company content because of the information overload. In this blog, we’ll share 9 steps for creating better content and engaging employees.
How do you engage with workers?
Keep remote meetings short. … Make social events planned. … Have an informal all-hands meeting online. … Say goodbye to email. … Create a remote working resources library. … Make all updates digital. … Record all important meetings. … Use polls and posts.
Looking for ways to engage remote employees and improve your company culture? Here are our best tips for engaging virtual teams. Consultants, freelancers, frontline workers, and full-time staff across time zones are all the same. And that’s remote work. They work from home or at a client site. Remote work offers many benefits to employees and employers. Employers can hire from anywhere in the world, and employees can work from anywhere.
What is the best way to engage with your employees?
How to Engage Employees: Base Feedback on Observations. Good feedback is key for all managers. … Show your employees you appreciate them. … Be open with your employees. … Assign work. … Be respectful. Support learning. Employee engagement is important for business success. Gallup says that engaged employees:
- Produce better results at work
- provide better service to customers
- stay with their organization longer
- experience less burnout
Despite these benefits, just 35 percent of professionals in the US feel enthusiastic about their job and committed to their organization.
How do leaders engage employees?
Good leaders know that supporting, giving feedback, and recognizing employees’ hard work are important. Great leaders know they’re setting a good example for the team. When workers are unmotivated and disengaged, it’s easy to blame tools, processes, and even workplace culture. But often, disengagement is due to poor leadership. Effective leaders can motivate employees fully. McGregor says leaders should inspire employees to do more than just do their jobs well. They should also find purpose in their roles. Here are some ways leaders can connect with their teams, encourage collaboration, and inspire their employees to do their best work.
1. Employees trust leaders who lead and follow. Company leaders shouldn’t act too authoritatively. Psychologists Kim Peters and Alex Haslam found that leaders can benefit by showing they can be followers.
How do you lift employee engagement?
5 simple steps to boost employee engagement: 1. Know who you are. Have you told your employees what your company stands for? Show employees where they fit in. You can’t just paint a picture. … Empower employees. … Reward and recognize risk. … Celebrate! Engaged employees lead to business success. What if your workers aren’t engaged? A recent Gallup study found that 60% of Australian workers are not engaged at work. Another 16% of Aussies are actively disengaged. In Australia, only one in four workers is truly inspired by their job. It’s important for companies to have engaged workers to succeed.
How do you motivate your nursing staff?
Involve nurses in decisions. Ask your nurses for their input on decisions that affect them, their patients, or the unit. Ask team members to join committees on staffing, violence prevention, and patient safety. Let nurses make clinical decisions within their scope of practice. This makes them feel trusted, empowered, and motivated.
Focus on how you communicate. Be supportive and approachable, and have regular meetings to build relationships. You’ll encourage recognition by giving feedback often. Clear expectations about care, productivity, and conduct are also important. Then give feedback often, focusing on what they can improve and what they’re doing well. This advice helps your team set challenging but realistic goals and expectations that align with their personal and organizational objectives. Reward hard work. Offer competitive pay and benefits and reward good work with bonuses. Make sure wages are fair. Offer other ways to keep your staff motivated. Thank your staff with notes and peer recognition.
What are the 4 P’s of engagement?
The Four Ps—partnerships, perspective, presence, and persistence—offer simple and useful guidelines for engagement.
How do you engage nursing staff?
15 tips to engage nurses. Build a strong brand. … Tell people what you stand for. … Give new hires a great welcome. … Engage employees daily. Create a respectful work environment. … Be a good example. Offer development opportunities. Hiring in healthcare has always been hard, but now it’s even harder. Nurses have felt a lot of pressure, heavy workloads, and long hours during and after the pandemic. Burnout is on the rise. More than half of healthcare workers report insomnia, stress, and mental health challenges. Nurses are leaving at a high rate, so these pressures will only grow. With more burnout, healthcare staff are doing less than they used to. If we don’t keep investing in our employees, more people will quit and burn out. This will make it harder to keep the workforce stable and could affect patient care in the long term. Talent teams should focus on retaining current nursing staff as much as they do on hiring new ones. To stop quiet quitting, boost nursing staff well-being and improve patient outcomes, you need to help your team improve the employee experience. Here are 15 tips to get you started.
What are the 6 C’s of employee engagement?
The 6 Cs are: Compliance, Clarification, Confidence, Connection, Culture, and Checkback. This framework helps you create an onboarding process that helps your organization retain top talent. Get the employee onboarding checklist now and make sure your next new hire has a great experience.
What are the 5 C’s of employee engagement?
Employee engagement is key to any organization’s success. Engaged employees are more productive, innovative, and loyal, which helps a company make money. To engage employees, experts suggest the 5 Cs strategy: Care, connect, coach, contribute, and congratulate. In this article, we’ll look at each of these Cs and back them up with data and insights from research. Caring for your employees is the first step in engaging them. Gallup says that 48% of employees are disengaged when they don’t feel cared for by their employers. This affects their work and leads to “quiet quitting.” Employees may be physically present but mentally absent. It’s important to understand employees’ needs and desires. By meeting employees’ needs, organizations can create a more engaged workforce. Caring can mean offering flexible work, mental health support, and recognizing work-life balance.
What are the strategies of employee engagement?
Open dialogue improves employee engagement and creates a positive work culture. Here are a few ways to help your organization:
Let employees speak up. Make it safe for employees to share ideas, concerns, and feedback. This might mean setting aside time for open discussions or having a suggestion box where employees can share ideas anonymously.
Open communication channels: Let employees talk openly with each other and with managers. This might mean setting up a team chat or suggestion forum. The hybrid workplace report says that 56% of workers say that companies can help improve their mental health by using asynchronous communication, such as chat and email.
📹 How The Human Connection Improves Healthcare | Anthony Orsini | TEDxGrandCanyonUniversity
How do we find verification in complex fields, such as medicine? Does our affirmative knowledge derive from vast statistics and …
That last point about connecting through a personal moment, such as asking, “how is your day going?” or “did you see the game yesterday” is such a good thing to bring up. It rings so loudly for me, a first year medical student, who just wants the future patients I care for to feel comfortable, at ease, and heard. But I’ll also try this with the practice patients we interact with in the curriculum. Making the patient smile is such a rewarding moment even as a young buck who feels like an imposter wearing a short white coat. But man, when I can make a patient smile, it makes me smile, and the doctor-patient relationship gets so much easier.
Even though we lost our son in the NICU 5 years ago, to this day, Orsini is one of my favorite doctors. He literally practices what he is still preaching. Even though he isn’t our doctor anymore, the man still checks in on us to see how we are doing more than my kids’ pediatrician. Like come on that is GOLD.
100% agree! My mother was in and out of the hospital a majority of her life and she did not like most doctors except her last PCP. He was the most compassionate doctor I’ve ever met and even came to pay his respects at my mother’s funeral. I’ll never forget that. It’s all about human connection. Thank you, Dr. Orsini, for this important message!
Tony – Tell this story at the beginning of every presentation! It humanizes what you do and brings a level of emotional attention to what you have to share. I so appreciated your invitation for the patient to help in bringing humanity into the interaction … bringing THEIR empathy and compassion into the relationship, forging a powerful connection that fosters healing. It really doesn’t matter if it’s the chicken or the egg ….
I work in healthcare sector. As a staff member I realise that the patients that come to the hospital are nervous and anxious. Some of them even cry with what’s going on with them. As a member of staff I try to ask them their well being in the limited time that I have to interact. Its important to be able to connect. But the reality is that there is not much time with the doctor to build a human connection. Lack of staff, lack of resources does put some amount of pressure on the overall care that is given to the patient. Having said that if all of us do our job with compassion, we can see great results in patient care. If you show confidence is the system and your ability to give best care, patients can feel the vibes and feel better about the whole treatment process that they have to go through.
This has probably got to be one of my favorite ted talks that I have watched thus far. Dr. Orsini’s story about “Dr. Cunningham” struck quite a chord with me. A few years ago when I had worked as a medical scribe in the emergency room, we had an unresponsive baby come in with a frantic and tearful mother. I had never seen the nurses and ER techs move so fast that day. Though we’ve had countless of codes come in in the past, we rarely received children, let alone a baby. Unfortunately, that baby did not make it. The attending ER doctor that was working on the case was a former military doctor with a very tough demeanor. That day, I saw him with tears in his eyes. Out of my years working as a scribe, I had never seen any of the attendings that I worked with shed a tear. I don’t know what words were ever exchanged between that attending and the baby’s parents, but I can assure they were words that will stick with them forever. When doctors become doctors, they take an oath to uphold the ethical principle of beneficence, which means to promote good and do what’s best for your patient. To uphold this principle, doctors spend a lot of their time and energy in making sure that they figure out the correct diagnosis and give the correct treatment to ensure that their patients stay alive and healthy. However, what most doctors forget is that human connection and building trust and rapport with your patient(s) also plays a huge role in upholding the principle of beneficence. Dr. Orsini stated in his talk that over 50% of patients felt lack of compassion from their doctors and frequently left the office feeling rushed.
It feels like the idea of human connection will only become increasingly more important in the future, as we continue toward healthcare practices that promote efficiency of time and money rather than genuine human empathy and personal care. The statistics which Dr. Orsini shared about 71% of surveyed patients perceiving a lack of compassion from their providers and 73% feeling rushed were both painful to see and, sadly, not that surprising. Compassion and empathy are crucial in situations where patients are facing serious or life-threatening illnesses. When patients receive a difficult diagnosis, they may experience a range of emotions, and healthcare providers who demonstrate compassion and empathy during these times can provide emotional support and comfort to their patients. This is essential in helping patients cope with their illness and navigate the healthcare system. When healthcare providers demonstrate compassion and empathy towards their patients, they are better able to establish a therapeutic relationship based on mutual trust and respect. Patients are more likely to feel comfortable discussing their concerns and disclosing sensitive information when they perceive their healthcare providers as compassionate and empathetic. This, in turn, can improve diagnosis and treatment, as healthcare providers are better able to understand patients’ unique circumstances and tailor care to meet their individual needs.\r \tWhen healthcare providers demonstrate compassion and empathy towards their patients, they are better able to establish a therapeutic relationship based on mutual trust and respect.
Dr. Orsini brings up a pretty scary yet very accurate point, “Doctors are now more task oriented than patient oriented.” Whether this is because physicians are now more burnt out due to increase focus on quantity of medicine over quality or purely because of the stress associated with our jobs, either way it puts the health of our patients at risk. I have now seen multiple articles over the last few weeks that stress the importance of this doctor patient relationship but none of them explained it quite as well as Dr. Orsini. Physicians live by a certain ethical code of beneficence, we go out of our way to help provide the best care for our patients and avoid anything that would bring them harm. However, as physicians we often get stuck in a rut as we rush from patient to patient that unconsciously or maybe even consciously we begin to neglect the social needs of our patients and that trust that can only be established by taking time to get to know our patients. He talks about an example of a patient that is more willing to take their medication when they have established trust with their physician vs. a patient who’s doctor has not taken time to foster that relationship and thus lacks trust in their advice. We can see that despite the physicians best interest at heart they cannot remove the patient’s autonomy to disregard their treatment recommendations, however, with the help of building a relationship of trust they can improve their ability to help patients see the benefits of the suggested treatment.
Anthony Orsini’s information brings up important ethical considerations about the role of empathy and communication in healthcare. Healthcare providers have a duty and obligation to prioritize the well-being of their patients and to treat them with poise and respect. Orsini argues that this interaction between patient and doctor is essential.\r With ethics in mind, healthcare providers have a responsibility to provide compassionate care that respects the autonomy and dignity of their patients. Patients become vulnerable when seeking healthcare, and they rely on healthcare providers to provide them with competent and complete care. This involves not only treating their physical ailments but also addressing their emotional and psychological needs.\r Orsini’s argument is that healthcare providers who prioritize empathy, communication, and relationship-building are better equipped to meet their ethical obligations to patients. They can build trust with patients, foster open and honest communication, and provide care that is tailored to each patient’s unique needs and preferences. I definitely agree with this approach, as I have been able to see on different occasions this method being successful.\r However, it’s also important to acknowledge the potential limitations of empathy and human connection in healthcare. Healthcare providers may have biases or limitations that prevent them from fully understanding the experiences and needs of their patients. Also, healthcare systems are not perfect.
Dr. Orsini’s discussion regarding the human connection is a great reminder on how the doctor-patient relationship flourishes when there’s a mutual, personable understanding between both parties. Unfortunately, I feel if healthcare systems don’t change soon, the rates of physician suicide and burnout are going to continually increase and patients will continually loathe and mistrust their physicians, perhaps even skipping caring for their health at all. The healthcare system is extremely overloaded now with incessant need for administrative duties that most primary care physicians don’t even feel as if they are practicing medicine anymore. While I could probably refer to any of the medical ethics principles, beneficence seems the most applicable in this case. Physicians are called upon to uphold the ethical principle of beneficence, or in other words, providing the best care they can for their patients. However, I can understand how difficult upholding beneficence might be when a physician’s workload is overwhelming, and he/she is overburdened with administrative duties. I really appreciate that Dr. Orsini also provides ways for patients to assist in their own encounters with their physicians by asking general questions such as how their physician is doing, have they taken a vacation recently, seen a recent game, etc. I feel these simple questions in a new doctor-patient relationship can indeed help a physician to relax and help establish a personable, empathetic foundation for the relationship to build.
I whole heartedly agree with Dr. Orsini. There has been a massive push by various organizations to make medicine about the numbers rather than the patients. Certain exams, treatments, tests, are pushed over others because of financial gain, not because it will genuinely help the patient. I know several physicians who are required by their governing organizations to see a patient every 15 minutes. That is supposed include charting as well. Its unfeasible and irrational. More importantly, it is harmful to the patients. Doctors and healthcare professionals in general are held to extremely unrealistic standards. They are all highly motivated individuals and want to do their best, but having such rigorous demands forces them to lose the human connection. It becomes very easy for them to disconnect and view their patients as numbers because that is what they are told to do. This directly violates patients autonomy while also violating the ethical principle of beneficence. Autonomy in healthcare is vital. When physicians and patients develop a relationship that allows them to openly communicate with one another, they allow for opportunity to fully analyze the character of their disease process and reach the most appropriate plan of care possible. They also facilitate trust which, as Dr. Orsini said, increases compliance in treatment and also improves healthcare outcomes. It is very tragic that physicians commit suicide at a higher rate than any other profession. It is easy to see that change needs to happen.
The ethical principles of beneficence and nonmaleficence are of great value when it comes to how physicians talk and deliver news to patients, as they must constantly be balanced. As a provider, it can be easy to forget how the world of healthcare affects patients physically, mentally and emotionally. Providers are constantly around and within the world of treatments, tests, clinics and hospitals, and for patients, each of those places may bring forth certain feelings that providers tend to forget due to constant interaction and comfortability. Dr. Orsini highlights the negative impact that poor communication and delivery of bad news can have on a patient’s mental and emotional well-being, discussing how it is essential for physicians to approach these situations with empathy, compassion, and sensitivity to avoid causing harm to their patients. While this is an easy statement to say, in the moment delivery of news caries weight for both the patient and the medical team. In addition to advocating for more compassionate, empathetic providers, there should be additional training on this topic, counseling for providers who hold onto the emotional and mental weight of delivering this news, and space for providers to take the time off that they need to be the best version of themselves for their patients. Further, the healthcare system and medical system have created a challenge for physicians, forcing them to choose between meeting a patient quota for the day and taking the time to connect with their patients, showing them that they too are a human.
This moving article inspired me to discuss the importance of empathy, human connection, and interpersonal communication skills that doctors need to have to give successful medical care to their patients. This article made me aware that so many patients are dissatisfied with their healthcare experience largely due to how the doctors communicated with them and the lack of compassion or understanding the physician showed to them during their visit. The doctor could have done everything right academically, but, if the physician has little to no personal skills during that visit – the patient could still change providers, be dissatisfied with their health care, and choose to not invest in their health through the hospital again. My university has many opportunities for practice in this setting before we get into the real world and it has been extremely useful. Many physicians feel inadequate when it comes to the emotional burnout that this job requires and largely this is due to a lack of training, education, and empathy that is put on them obtaining and incorporating interpersonal skills, empathy, and human connection in their practice. What are the benefits of all of this? There are many but we will start with how important it is for doctors to have a close relationship with their patients because it creates a safe environment for patients to share sensitive and crucial information about lifestyle, medical history, or habits that they need to treat their patients correctly and with quality.
This is a wonderful talk that points out some very serious flaws in our healthcare system. When taking into consideration the principles of medical ethics, the principle of beneficence comes to mind while perusal this TED Talk. The principle of beneficence simply means that the patient’s well-being and safety are being put as a priority. The story Dr. Orsini told is very impactful because it demonstrates how intelligence and skill cannot make up for compassion. It made me think about the current admission process for medical students across the country. So much emphasis is placed on grade point average, MCAT scores, publications, and extracurriculars, while it seems that the more human aspects of the applicant are ignored. This raises the question, is the principle of beneficence being unintentionally forgotten in this quest to find the best and brightest applicants to train as our future healthcare providers? Pre-med students throughout the country have become robot-like in trying to outdo each other with their grades and entrance exam scores, yet they are neglecting to really consider if they have the compassion and a pure intent to help people in the future as healthcare providers. This talk has such an important message that all healthcare providers need to hear. I do believe that in order to uphold the principle of beneficence, all healthcare providers need to learn compassion, communication, and learn how to really connect with those around them. Doing so will not only benefit the patients, but also the families like the baby’s dad in Dr.
Dr. Anthony Orsini does such a good job at speaking at the heart of medicine. The genuine human connection is what it is all about. I love how he focused so much of his career on building repour and trust. The physician patient relationship is so important for the patient to be able to be vulnerable and open. When a patient is vulnerable with their physician, they can share key factors that may be integral for the whole mind, body, and spirit to properly heal. We are social creatures and as such we need human connection. It is important to help those that are broken, and lonely feel cared about and loved. There is a lot of superficial motives that exist in our modern society, it is important that medical providers spend time internally reflecting on maintaining genuine motives in helping their patients. You can have all the knowledge and expertise but without a good relationship with the patient all your knowledge to help them will be in vain. Without a good relationship the doctor will not be able to convey their knowledge to the patient. Effective communication is essential in getting the patient the care they need. Not every patient will be in the best mood, but we can always do more break down walls to cultivate these relationships. Hopefully all physicians who see this article remember their medical oath and that it is their responsibility to act in their patients’ best interests. I am grateful for physicians like Dr. Anthony Orsini who remember the tenets of medicine and are continually trying to bring them back into the forefront of how we practice.
Dr. Orsini made a point in his article of what medicine truly is. It’s not about science or technology or how smart the doctor is. It comes down to human-to-human interaction between patient and doctor. It is bewildering to me the data they were able to get from surveys and how 71% stated that their doctor lacked compassion. In healthcare, human connection should play a vital role in improving patient outcomes. A lot of the time, that human connection is essential for our own well-being and that doctor-patient relationship shouldn’t be different. Dr Orsini mentioned how burnout from doctors has moved them to being more task oriented rather than patient oriented which can be disheartening. When patients feel connected and supported by their healthcare providers, they are more likely to adhere to treatment plans, report symptoms more accurately, and overall have better health outcomes. It is important for healthcare providers to be able to connect with their patients. I really liked how Dr. Orsini mentioned a few ways that doctors and patients can connect on that first visit and that is something I personally didn’t realize. Being able to talk to my doctor as a friend and someone I trust has personally helped me improve my health outcomes. Improving that relationship can help reduce settings for patients in which they might be stressed or have some anxiety. It is important that healthcare providers take the time to connect with their patients and to establish that rapport. Ultimately, this will build trust between the doctor and patient and make a significant difference in the patient’s well-being.
Dr. Orsini has been working with healthcare providers to teach them the communication skills necessary to build trusting relationships with patients and families for more than a decade. If you want to know the secret of getting the best healthcare experience the next time you go to the office or hospital, this is a must see. Take 10 minutes out of your day and benefit for the rest of your life.
I found Dr. Orsini’s comment about being a relatable person and a doctor second most interesting and ties greatly into the discussion of ethics. In the medical field it is so often expected that the doctor knows everything. As a medical student this idea becomes quite apparent and can make us forget why we wanted to practice medicine in the first place. I think Dr. Orsini’s comment about being a relatable person first is exactly the kind of mindset doctors need to continuously remind themselves of. Medicine is not about knowing everything. It’s about working with patients and letting them be a part of their care. Specifically allowing the patients to have autonomy. This ultimately will lead to better healthcare outcomes and improve the doctor patient relationship. I also strongly believe this would put a lot less stress on doctors and lead to a decrease in burn out. The focus isn’t solely on coming to the correct diagnosis, which certainly is important, but rather allowing the doctor to be honest when they do not know what is going on. It opens up the conversation between the patient and doctor which is so often left behind. From the patient perspective I know I do not expect my doctor to know everything, all I ask for is open communication and an understanding that my voice is being heard.
Rapport and trust are so important when tackling one’s health – not just with your health care provider but when one’s self. When we are able to hold space for ourselves we are better equipped to understand and articulate what is going on within ourselves which leads to an easier job for the people who care for us and help us.
I liked what Dr. Orsini had to say about the relation of the human connection and healthcare. He mentions that medicine is now becoming “task oriented instead of patient oriented.” This shift in the focus of healthcare is resulting in a loss of physician autonomy. In medicine, autonomy is the concept that one has the freedom to choose when it comes to their care. We often recognize that patients have autonomy when it comes to their healthcare, but physicians do too. Doctors have the freedom to choose the conditions of practice and the care delivered within the patient’s best interest. As Dr. Orsini stated, “medicine is becoming more and more about increased documentation, electronic medical records, and maximized efficiency.” This model of healthcare practice is taking the autonomy from the doctor to manage their practice as they see fit. The dictation of practice management is happening from the top down, and currently the ‘top’ is not the physician, it is management and private and public health insurance companies dictating patient care. This idea that the physician is not in charge may lead to a decrease in patient trust thus worse healthcare outcomes. The loss of physician autonomy threatens healthcare. While I see the value of practice management and health insurance programs, they need to take an alternate position in the chain of command. We need to transition back to a system where the physician and patient are at the ‘top’ and the rest follows. Too often we see insurances denying the care that is prescribed by a physician, but if this recommendation is being made with the patient’s well-being in mind, then why are these organizations getting the final say on if this treatment happens or not.
Dr. Orsini discusses a fundamental part of healthcare and that is human connection. No matter what someone does in the medical field, whether that be a physician, nurse, P.A., N.P, medical technician, etc. there is always some sort of human connection that is involved in the care of the patient. Physicians are placed under massive stressors to document correctly and on time, as well as meeting a certain quota. Due to this, some physicians can forget the real reason why they became a physician in the first place; to help people. Hearing from people in my life, I hear about people who are completely dissatisfied with their healthcare and from people who absolutely love their physician. The people who love their physician all have one common thing they like about their healthcare provider and that is feeling like they are being heard. As in the story that Dr. Orsini gave at the beginning of his talk, there are many instances where people are in their most vulnerable state when dealing with healthcare. Whether that be their loved ones having the medical problem or themselves. So being heard, communicated well to, and feeling like there is a connection there is so important. This importance is also included in practicing techniques such as the 4 C’s of culturally appropriate communication (call, cause, cope, concerns). This technique allows physicians to give the patient and or their family the opportunity to explain where they are coming from. It also can open up a door into the insight of cultural, religious, and fundamental beliefs of the patient.
Man that story about the baby just had me weeping… and I don’t even have or want babies. I can’t imagine how difficult that kind of a situation is on everyone involved. I thought Dr Cunningham might have told him some trope like you have to be cold and removed otherwise it takes too much of a toll but wow.
As a future physician I truly believe that a humanistic connection with our patients is a vital component of healthcare, one that can significantly change patient outcomes. When a patient feels heard and understood by their provider, they are going to be more likely to adhere to treatment plans. Moreover, this will only increase the positive perceptions with the patients of their overall experience. We as providers have a moral obligation to prioritize foster a meaningful connection with every patient we encounter. Often in medical treatment, providers can easily fall into only focusing on the technical aspects of medica care, such as what procedure needs to be performed, interpreting lab results and even administering medications. Yet we must remember that Medicare at its core is about helping people. One must always no fall into predations about patients just being diagnoses. Each patient will provide unique individual needs and only through our experience with connections with that patient can we fully understand and address those factors. One major way that human confection influences healthcare is by increasing the trust and confidence between patients and their provider. When patients feel that providers genially care for them and are interested in their own well-being, they are far more likely to trust their medical recommendation and expertise. This without a doubt will lead to better health outcomes. Moreso, lifestyle changes can be often a difficult thing to encourage a patient to do.
Dr. Anthony Orsini talked about a very powerful experience that resonated with me. We all have our reasons that we wanted to get into the medical field. We also have our own paths that we have taken to come to the point where we are in our careers. Through out this whole journey we have interacted with many people and will continue to do so in the coming years.
It is easy to focus on the science and ethics of being a doctor but the art of medicine and integrating humanity into practice is just as important if not more to the care that is provided to patients and their families. \r \r To provide true beneficence, healthcare providers need to prioritize the opportunities to convey compassion throughout each interaction. \r \r But how do healthcare providers balance being human as well as professional in the workplace? I think that looks different for each person and circumstances but we can all agree that building that rapport leads to better trust and patient outcomes.
Dr. Orsini, thank you so much for your wonderful perspective on compassion and empathy in doctor-patient interactions. I especially liked hearing the story of your experience with your mentor when he had to deliver bad news to a patient’s father. It’s clear that your mentor knew he had not done a good job with this task, and it weighed very heavily on him. It’s a common theme among physicians that they struggle with how to deliver bad news to a patient in a kind and empathetic way. I think that this likely stems from a fear of how the patient will react as well as a fear on the doctor’s part that they will get very emotionally involved in that moment and not be able to control it. Many doctors want to go into medicine because they feel a lot of compassion and empathy for their patients, and when you feel things so deeply, it can be hard to separate yourself from putting yourself in your patient’s shoes. I know why Dr. Orsini recommends doing this with patients—it can do exactly what he said with compassion pouring forth very easily. But this can be a double-edged sword when it has the potential to step over the line of being too emotional as a doctor. Physicians should not be un-feeling robots, but also must maintain professionalism along with empathy. \r Being empathetic is truly the new wave of medicine, though. And this is not a bad thing—the idea of including empathy as a necessary component of patient care aligns beautifully with the ethical concepts of beneficence and non-maleficence.
What he’s saying here is pretty interesting and I can’t help but think of medicine women, witch doctors, shamans… all the healers way before modern medicine and how within smaller communities those people would have known and cared about one another and maybe that would have helped the process in some way?
This seems incredibly obvious but then I thought about how much stuff doctors have to learn before actually becoming doctors and after realising that it just seems ironic. That they teach you everything about how to clinically treat a person but they forget to teach you how to TREAT a person. Hopefully y’all understand the distinction I’m making here.
I can’t help but think that is the result of the role of a Doctor being reduced to a profession and then glorified within certain cultures like, if you aren’t a Doctor, Lawyer or Engineer you’re a failure and bring shame on the family. People who are only doing something to please someone else will never have their entire heart in it.