Improving patient experience: Lessons from an envelope company

by Anthony Cirillo Physicians are suffering from a bad rap these days. Recently a FierceHealthcare article reported a study by Danielle Ofri, M.D., Ph.D., an associate professor of medicine at NYU School of Medicine, which found "empathy and moral reasoning begin to erode during the third year of medical school, with students daily witnessing both patients and doctors experience fear, anger, grief and humiliation." At the same time, JAMA took on the topic of physician communication. In one study, Amina White, M.D., and Marion Danis, M.D., of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., wrote "the presence of a computer in the examination room and the pressure to document the visit in the electronic health record (EHR) are often perceived as adversely affecting the patient-physician interaction." They suggested using the EHR as a relational tool for improving individual and population-based health outcomes. In a JAMA editorial, Abigail Zuger, M.D., of St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York, commented about "changes in physicians' speaking and writing habits that will be necessary to accommodate new models of practice." She wrote: "The physician will be fluent in standard clinical language, including the delicate phrases of care and compassion. The physician will be adept at translating medical jargon into comprehensible lay terms, knowing how to defuse words, such as obese or psychotic, that might cause alarm or hurt feelings. The physician will ...
Source: hospital impact - Category: Health Managers Authors: Source Type: blogs