So today, I went to see the patient I referred to in my previous blog post. She, miraculously, believes I saved her life. Apparently my surgeon has been pouring honey into her ear about me all week. Oh well, I'll take what I can get. It is nice to be appreciated occasionally.....
Anyhow, I suggest to her that she be investigated for a coagulation problem. Once we are both on the same page, ie. that coagulation refers to blood clotting, she pipes up, "Oh, but this has happened to me before. When I had teeth out as a teenager, I bled so much they had to give me blood..."
At this point, I started looking around for the ton of bricks I was about to get hit with.. Reason being, you see, I asked her last week if she had any blood clotting problems. She denied this. I guess I didn't phrase the question in the right terms. If you only have a short time with a patient, you simply cannot get all the information and double check every answer. So I'm left with two conclusions. Firstly, what is important to me in a consultation may not be important to the patient. Secondly, I need to get better at communicating how important things are, so I get better information.... Communication skills are not well taught at medical schools.. This is something I will take into my teaching. I simply have to figure out how.
Scrappy Quilt
5 days ago
Posts
3 comments:
Haha! good story. It reminds me of when I was a med student and would take a history from my patient. He would answer all my questions, I would present him to the consultant, who would then ask him the same set of questions, and receive a different set of answers. I always assumed that the patient must be lying to the consultant...
We are enjoying your blog and look forward to each new post. (This is your Bermuda audience speaking)
Medicalese becomes so pervasive to the way one thinks that even simple concepts come out wrong. I suggest you try out your basic spiel on a couple of non-medical friends/family and see what they think you're asking. The bigger the sample, the better the survey :) Oh and try some Xhosa/Zulu/Sotho speakers as well...
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