Dealing with Difficult Patients |
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Posted By: Julie Shenkman In: Healthcare & Medical
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Healthcare professionals have to be many things at once—where difficult patients are concerned, that can include anger management expert, lay counselor, and customer service rep. How do you deal with difficult healthcare patients and avoid an escalating situation?
In addition to the training you get in dispensing individual healthcare, it helps to use some basic psychology to manage a tricky situation involving an angry or difficult patient. Step one? Put yourself in the patient’s shoes.
Having to seek treatment is stressful. When you need healthcare information or are waiting for the results from a lab test, waiting to learn the results or coping with the news from those results turns up the pressure on an already uncomfortable set of circumstances.
When dealing with difficult patients, try to keep your mind centered on the individual healthcare needs and concerns of your patient. Remember that many difficult patients aren’t used to dealing with healthcare professionals, hospitals or any of the other things health pros handle on a daily basis.
Sometimes the quickest way to defuse a tense situation is to get right to the point—ask a difficult patient what exactly you can do to help them. What’s making them angry? What do they need to know in order to get back to a more reasonable state of mind? Sometimes it’s a lack of information or an update late in coming that creates the added stress.
In other cases the situation itself is the problem, and sometimes the patient has a problem with you for some reason. When that happens, you may find the best thing to do is to appeal to a higher authority. Bringing your supervisor or superior into the mix could mitigate some of the tension or difficulty; the key is to know the right moment to call for backup.
You can tell when the problem requires some outside help by listening to the patient. Are they repeating themselves again and again? Are they asking rational questions or simply being aggressive? When the discussion breaks down even after dispensing all the healthcare information at your disposal and you’ve exhausted your personal arsenal of diplomacy, don’t run in circles. Outside help should be your next step.
Healthcare patients need a special combination of things from their medical professionals; tact, concern, information and guidance. When times get tough between patient and professional, remember not to take it personally. Do your best to help the patient understand what’s happening, and what happens next.
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