Patient-Centered Care

I watched the video by Dave Moen at TEDxUMN describe the future of patient-centered care. I found that the core themes of the video revolved around respect and compassion. The speaker describes a powerful experience that the clinician had with a patient and I completely agree about the role of respect in patient interactions. Patients aren’t just impersonal case studies, they are complex and emotional human beings that deserve compassionate treatment.

I once witnessed a situation where a care provider did not sufficiently empathize with the patient enough to understand their underlying problems and work with them to come up with an effective plan of action, in my opinion. The situation was that I evaluated a patient as part of a workplace-mandated physical examination, but it quickly became clear that his actual issue was his depressed mental state. He was so melancholy that he wasn’t taking care of himself and hadn’t eaten in 4 days. He confided in a coworker about his situation and that’s how he was referred to their HR department for help.

Unfortunately, the clinician that I reported to didn’t see the situation the same way and didn’t treat the patient with as much respect as I would’ve liked. He re-examined the patient in a curt way and made him drop his pants in front of me without warning for a hernia examination, which I found to be de-humanizing. Then he asked for alone time with the patient so he could talk to him without me, after which he listed the depression as a secondary factor and instead emphasized the physical pain from previous injuries. 

I found this to be a very different approach than I would’ve preferred. Both the method and final conclusion ignored the role of empathy and collaboration that we emphasize in our nursing curriculum. As a result, I was concerned about the effectiveness of the treatment plan, since maybe he would just keep bouncing around until someone else also realized that his mental state was an important factor.

Personally, I would’ve wanted to bring more empathy into the situation, even if I had come to the same conclusion in the end. It’s important to me to treat people with respect and not like just another clinical appointment.