Professional Courtesy, LLC

Karen Hickman specializes in Etiquette and Protocol Consulting and is based out of Fort Wayne, IN | TEL: 260-486-7758

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Keeping Your Patients Well Informed

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Doctor with female patient

 

Keeping Your Patients Well Informed

Are you giving your patients adequate information after a surgery or a major procedure? It may be time to re-evaluate your patient education materials and or the way you respond to patient questions.

Post-op and post procedural care is so important to patient outcome and success. And I am often surprised when I hear from family members and friends that they didn’t get adequate information or adequate answers to their questions about recovery expectations.

What may seem obvious to medical people may not seem at all obvious to a patient without any medical background who is experiencing something way out of their comfort zone or area of expertise.

Responding to the question, “when can I expect to start exercising after my surgery?” with “whenever you feel like it,” doesn’t seem to be a good enough response to me. Surely adding some time frame to that response would be more helpful. How about giving the typical recovery time and go from there. Certainly, a patient’s age, general health status and many other factors make each case different, but in the case of patient information, “more is more.”

Take a look at your material, evaluate it and look at it from the perspective of a non-medical person and see if it answers the repeated questions that you get from your patients. If you are getting lots of calls after procedures from your patients with lots of questions, then your material probably isn’t doing the job.

Here are a few things to consider when developing patient information material:

  • Develop a check list as to what material is given and by whom, to your patients post surgically and post procedural.

  • Designate a specific person in your office to deliver the information and take the calls after the procedure is over. Giving their name and extension number can save a lot of frustration for the patient who might otherwise have to navigate a difficult phone tree.

  • Address the most common issues that can go wrong after a certain procedure and what the patient should do about it.

  • Define clear expectations for optimal recovery. For instance, how much physical therapy is going to be needed to get back up to speed.

  • Be clear about pain medication; how to take it to get the maximum benefit. And how to get refills if allowed and needed.

  • Educate the patient on signs of infection and any other serious things that can go wrong after a procedure.

  • List limitations and general time frame for those limitations.

  • Make sure the patient has adequate help at home. If they don’t, social services may need to be brought in to evaluate things.

This list could go on and on, but most importantly be open to patient questions. Try to anticipate what could come up and treat patient questions the way you’d like your questions treated in the same situation…with respect. There are no dumb questions in this case.

Do you wish you would have had better information from your physician after a surgery? If so, what?

Seek Patient Permission

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Seek Patient Permission

It is not unusual for physicians to be shadowed by all sorts of people. Sometimes, college students will seek out summer jobs in a physician’s office to see if they want to consider a career in medicine or even, nursing. Med students will follow physicians for a period of time to gain some practical experience in their field or specialty. And certainly, in teaching hospitals, it is very common for a group of students and physicians to round on patients.

However, regardless of who is following or shadowing the physician, there are some important considerations to be observed.

  • Be sure and seek the patient’s permission before bringing an unexpected person into the patient exam room.

  • Introduce those who are following the physician and let the patient know who they are, and why they are there.

  • Seek patient permission before allowing a student or intern to do a procedure on a patient.

  • Respect the patients right to decline having someone else in the room during their exam or do a procedure on them.

  • Train the people following the physician in patient privacy guidelines.

  • Limit the number people allowed to follow the physician at any one time.

Always remember to put yourself in the patients position. If you were in the same situation would you want to be exposed to crowd? Being naked in a crowd can be a humbling experience for anyone.

YOUR PROFESSIONAL COURTESY EVALUATION

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PROFESSIONAL COURTESY EVALUATION

Your Professional Courtesy Evaluation
Could your professional skills and that of your office or practice use a little tweaking? Respond to the questions below and see what jumps out at you. If most of your answers are “poor” or “fair” more work is needed.

How do you rate your professional courtesy skills?

  1. Poor
  2. Fair
  3. Good
  4. Great

How do you rate your courtesy quotient?

  1. Poor
  2. Fair
  3. Good
  4. Great

Do you consider yourself to be a good listener?

  1. Poor
  2. Fair
  3. Good
  4. Great

Do you consider yourself to be a kind person to your co workers and friends?

  1. Poor
  2. Fair
  3. Good
  4. Great

Are you a critical person?

  1. Poor
  2. Fair
  3. Good
  4. Great

Do you gossip or participate in spreading gossip?

  1. Poor
  2. Fair
  3. Good
  4. Great

Are you a positive person?

  1. Poor
  2. Fair
  3. Good
  4. Great

Do you shake hands and introduce yourself to your patients?

  1. Poor
  2. Fair
  3. Good
  4. Great

Do you make good eye contact when speaking to co workers, patients or clients?

  1. Poor
  2. Fair
  3. Good
  4. Great

Do you consider yourself to be a good team player?

  1. Poor
  2. Fair
  3. Good
  4. Great

Do you welcome new staff members?

  1. Poor
  2. Fair
  3. Good
  4. Great

Do you have a “not my job” mentality at work?

  1. Poor
  2. Fair
  3. Good
  4. Great

RATE YOUR OFFICE OR MEDICAL PRACTICE

How do you rate the general feel of your office or practice?

  1. Poor
  2. Fair
  3. Good
  4. Great

Do you think your patients and clients perceive your office to be courteous?

  1. Poor
  2. Fair
  3. Good
  4. Great

Is your office welcoming to new staff members and coworkers?

  1. Poor
  2. Fair
  3. Good
  4. Great

What improvements do you feel could be made to improve the courtesy and general tone of your office or practice?

Resolve to be Civil in 2014

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Resolve to be Civil in 2014

Are you the kind who makes New Years resolutions? If so, I’d like to challenge you to be more civil in every aspect of your life. It seems that civility has gone out of style and many of us need to be reminded as to what that means.

Civility is an important frame-work of our society. Without it, we all seem to run a muck and treat each other poorly. The rules of etiquette tell us how to treat each other. It isn’t about pretense; it’s about consideration for others.

As I review some of the posts on social media and in the news, of people being out right mean toward others, I become very sad. When did it become okay to call a beautiful women “fat” because she has held onto a few pounds after having a baby. Or how about those who feel they have the right to insult others because they hold an opposing view on politics, religion or any other social, hot topic.

So in 2014 consider some of these resolutions:

  • If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.

  • Talk to people, not about them.

  • Be kind, it costs very little.

  • Do more than your share at work.

  • Be positive. No one likes to work with, or be around negative people.

  • Find the good in everybody.

  • Be grateful for something in your life everyday.

  • Treasure your friends and loved ones.

  • Volunteer somewhere, regardless of how busy you are.

  • Respect the opinions of others, even if they differ from yours.

  • Listen more, talk less.

We have heard many of these points from the time we were very young, but sometimes, in a cynical world, we forget how important they are.

In so many of my seminars people tell me that what I teach is really just common sense…yes, it is. The trouble with common sense is that it is not always very common.

So, I too, will join you in working on this list of resolutions.

Happy 2014.

Reach Out and Touch Your Patients

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More and more, I hear business people say that they don’t like to touch people, shake hands or to be touched by others due to the risk of getting germs. This is a very sad commentary, as far as I am concerned. But even sadder, to me, was to hear nurses say they don’t like to touch their patients because they feel they are unclean or they don’t want to risk getting their germs.

While I appreciate not wanting to get someone’s germs that may cause an illness, I think to take the “no touch” approach with your patients is risky and very damaging to developing a mutually respectful relationship.

Nurses and physicians are certainly taught techniques on hand washing, maintaining sterile fields, dealing with patients who are infectious by using isolation procedures and various other ways to protect themselves and avoid spreading diseases to other people. So why the resistance to touch your patients?

I think it is multifaceted with some of it brought on by how high-tech medicine has become. Healthcare workers are now booting up their computers to enter data and the answers to the questions they ask their patients, often, before they even shake their hand or make eye contact with them. Physicians are now able to do every test imaginable to diagnose patients that it seems rather easy to forget about actually putting your hands on the patient. I have even had people tell me they received a complete physical without ever having taken any clothes off. This is unimaginable to me. If physicians aren’t actually looking at someone’s body, I would guess they are missing some things.

We know from studies that babies who are not touched fail to thrive and some, even die. The human touch is a big part of diagnosing and healing. Imagine the elderly patient who lives alone and has no one to hug them. Touching people and being touched is essential to life. We all seek touch from those we love. Why not make sure it is part of the equation when caring for patients.

So, here are some tips to ensure you make some sort of physical contact with your patients:

  • Upon entering a patient’s room in the hospital or the office exam room, extend your hand to meet them before you go to the computer to start asking questions.

  • If handshaking is not possible, touch the patient on the shoulder, or arm. This is a comforting gesture when consoling them or delivering bad news…something they will appreciate.

  • Spend a few moments talking directly to the patient. Note the color of their eyes to make sure you are making appropriate eye contact.

  • Introduce yourself and let them know what you do and who you are; nurse, tech, P.A., etc.

  • While entering data in your computer, look at the patient while asking the question and then look at the keyboard when entering their answers. Reassure the patient that you are listening to them.

  • Shake hands or extend another touch upon leaving the exam room. Your touch will be noted.

If you still don’t want to touch your patients, maybe you should reevaluate why you went into medicine. Compassion is important in caring for the sick.

And for those business people who don’t like to shake hands…to refuse to shake hands with someone is a huge insult. Shaking hands is the universally accepted way to touch others in almost, every country in the world. So, reach out and touch someone, then go use your antibacterial wipes

Company Profile

Founded in 1999, the mission of Professional Courtesy and Karen Hickman is to present programs of the finest quality with the highest degree of professionalism.

The purpose of the seminars and programs is to enable professionals, executives, and individuals to conduct business in diverse cultural arenas with ease.
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Contact Us

Professional Courtesy, LLC
Etiquette/Protocol Consultants
P.O. Box 15353
Fort Wayne IN 46885-5353

Telephone: 260-486-7758
Facsimile: 260-486-7758
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