The do's and don'ts of patient care

Hey guys, it's Dr.Rishi Desai here from Osmosis, I'm the chief medical officer and this week I want to talk to you guys about the Top 3 Do's and Dont's of patient care.

First tip: Treat a patient the way that you would want to be treated, don't preach. And I have a short story that I want to share with you I was with a family member and my family member is using Methadone.

Methadone is a way to get off of opiates. and the physician didn't know I was a doctor and I was just kind of sitting there like a friend or a family member and I got to hear how this Doctor was speaking to my family member and I was blown away.

It was really disrespectful, it was really rude, it was preachy. They were like "Why are you using Methadone?"

You know like, "Why are you on that drug? That's for drug addicts, etc."

And it was really really condescending, it was mean and then I mention, "Oh you know, "I'm a pediatrician" and the whole tone changed.

You know, immediately the person was really nice and kind of, you know, kinder and, you know gentler. But it was really, kind of eye opening I was like my gosh you know, you thought I was a Doctor that’s why you were being nice but up until then you were being kind of condescending to my family member here and so, that was a good lesson for me in terms of how patients are often treated.

And that was really upsetting to me. Again, you know when you have a patient in front of you, treat them the way that you would want to be treated.

Whatever the issue is, they’re coming in very very vulnerable. And just respect that, that vulnerability and be kind around it.

So, that’s the first thing I wanted to say. Number two, tip number two: Remember to follow-up and don’t forget those patients.

So, for example, one thing that I often try to do myself but I don’t see a lot of people doing is calling my patients maybe two three weeks later just to check in.

It takes five minutes. And you can literally just say "Hey I’ve got five minutes I'd just like to call and see how you are doing."

And that makes a world of difference for your patients That they know that their doctor called to check in on them for five minutes.

You know keep in mind that I might spend 20 hours working on a patient. across two or three weeks when they are in the in-patient side in the hospital That extra last five minutes for just a phone call is what they’ll really remember, what they're gonna kinda walk away remembering you by.

And so just if you’re gonna spend all that time in a hospital caring about a patient Care for those five more minutes just a few weeks later just to say “Hey, how are things going now that you’re home, is everything okay?” And every once in a while you find out that things are not okay And you’ll be so glad that you called because then they might come back in for another reason Or there might be an issue that they may not have been thinking about to check in with you So It’s great to just kind of do that follow-up call a few weeks down the road.

Tip number three: Be honest and don’t lie. So I have a short story here too.

I had a patient who had a bone biopsy. It was a little girl and she needed a bone biopsy of her upper arm, her humerus, And um, we got the biopsy results And it turned out that the biopsy tissue was a muscle.

Actually they didn’t even get bone. And so we had to back and explain to the mom that we needed to get another bone biopsy.

This is a painful procedure, it was not comfortable, it was very upsetting for the little girl as you could imagine, and her mom.

And she said “Well, why?” And I heard my attending say “Oh, it’s because the first one was not conclusive.” Which is true, technically, like it was inconclusive, we didn’t get an answer from it But what he didn’t say was that actually, we didn’t even get bone.

Meaning that the person who did the procedure messed up. And so we talked about it a little bit later And I went back and spoke to this attending, And said “Maybe we should just tell her that we actually just missed the bone completely and it was a mess up on our part.” and he was like “Yeah I guess we could say that, I mean I don’t see the difference but, if you want to you can go explain that.” And so I did I told this patient I said “We, in the first biopsy, it wasn’t inconclusive because the tissue wasn’t good, it was that we actually because we got the wrong part of the arm, we got the muscle not the bone" And she took it really well she was like “Yeah I understand, you know, people make mistakes and whatnot but I'm really glad you told me.” And so again, be honest if there are mistakes just be straightforward about it.

You know, don’t cover it up, don’t lie about it. I think patients really respect that and I think that her respect for our hospital went up because of that.

So again, a few tips: 1. Treat a patient the way that you’d want to be treated, don’t preach.

2. Remember to follow-up and don’t forget patients (a few weeks later just give them a quick call) 3.

Be very honest especially around mistakes that get made and don’t lie about them. Take care guys!

Bye. Start your free trial today, at Osmosis.org.