How Nurses Can Think of the Person Behind the Disease

How Nursing Attitudes Can Impact a Patient

With long days and even longer nights, knowing what a nurse is going through can be beneficial to the patient, but there are still patient's rights that need to be addressed. Over the course of the years, given the growing health industry, there have been a disconnection between viewing the patient as a person and so on. While it isn't exactly the fault of just one person, there are different factors that are indeed at play. If being at a hospital wasn't bad enough, then being treated as less than one deserves is even more horrid for some. 

Something as simple as eye contact or anything else related to the personal touch can be beneficial to the patient and to the staff of the hospital or healthcare place, also. It might seem as if the staff of a place doesn't care, which can be frustrating on all accounts. This is not something that should be taken lightly by any means. Finding a better way to address these issues is not only something that needs to be addressed in full, but is a growing problem with the number of Americans who are becoming more dependent upon medical visits and medicines around the globe. It can seem as if someone is losing their individuality, which is a disheartening case and story for many of those across the country and around the globe. 

What Can be Done About Making Patients Feel Better Understood

In addition to patients feeling left out, more often than not doctors and nurses are on the receiving end of patients. While the blame is most certainly not everywhere and cannot be placed on a single individual overall based upon the way the system is operated and ran, patients can become frustrated and act out in manners that they should not. A patient who is acting out can, over time, cause a doctor or nurse to become more indifferent to other patients and can leave a bad taste in their mouth when it comes to giving out professional and medical advice in general.

Patients can also be kept from making the right decisions if the doctor seems abrupt and uncaring. While the getting into appointments requires arduous scheduling in today's busy schedule, it can take months or even years to find a great new health provider that will overall assist in making healthier and better decisions for the patients at hand. Patients that feel as if they are having issues might not even speak up or voice their complaints directly to the doctor. If a patient feels as if they are not being treated properly, look for resources outside of the hospital to contact. An investigation could take place if serious mistrust was had. Study after study has shown that there is a sort of disconnection from healthcare professionals and patients. 

How Patients Can be Impacted

Patients who are reporting fewer typically 'sick' symptoms are also more likely to report a better understanding and overall experience at their place of visit. To help  make patients feel as if their voice matters and counts, healthcare professionals need to understand that even simple eye contact or calling someone by their last name with an address can be more than enough for some people to feel emotionally comforted. Most individuals report feeling more secure if they have a friendly and overall happy relationship if their doctors and nurses show understanding. Healthcare professionals can help with those who are facing issues throughout their life in a constructive manner better if they had proper training. A large idea is to have better training and teaching communications courses that, overall, will assist all types of healthcare professionals.

Seminars and programs that can offer advice and wisdom for these areas will be beneficial to the health of both patients and healthcare workers alike. Some healthcare workers might not see this an issue and continue their own methods without giving  a second thought to viewing the patient as a person. Viewing the patient as a person is not only vital to their overall health, but will establish a level of trust and communication that can be done in a proper and kind style. The best news about all of this? It would truly not cost that much money and can be done with just simple attitude changes.

Patients can be known to get over excited or feel extremely worried, but it is the job of the healthcare staff to remain positive and offer up assistance when needed. If a medical professional is simply looking at the chart and not listening to the patient, then they can feel as if their needs are not being met at all. With this type of habit, the healthcare world is seeing a sharp decline in patient satisfaction and worker satisfaction. Thus, leading those around to feel more irritated as diagnosing fewer issues properly. Although just a small suggestion, healthcare professional who do not wear the same outfits can be less intimidating according to some, as Kellogg Insight has noted.

What Can Be Done For A Better Relationship

The detachment and viewing them as above the patient is a mindset that, truly, has to stop in order for these types of mishaps and errors to get better. If a patient doesn't feel comfortable at the doctor's office because their own needs are not being taken care of, that could stop them from going to the physician overall. This kind of behavior needs addressed right at the start. A bad experience should not, however, let a patient make up their mind about not receiving adequate medical treatment when it is needed. Just because a dreadful experience was had all around does not mean that all healthcare professionals are of that sort!

Finding the right clinic and healthcare professionals to assist with all the needs a patient has in an understanding manner will help them when it comes to working out better ways to find a happy medium between a patient and healthcare professional. It has also been shown that some healthcare professionals show less empathy than they should, which means that the patient is not receiving the full and proper healthcare benefits. This can be especially true of doctors that never received training or only went into the degree for the money and not the passion of what they are doing.

Feeling as if a healthcare patient is understood is not an easy task in today's society, but is one that has demands to be met. If someone feels as if they are not being respected, looking for outside sources to voice concerns to will be of uttermost importance to a patient's health and total well being down the road. It isn't an easy task keeping up with a copious amount of medical problems, let alone finding out that the healthcare professional one is seeing doesn't truly care about their own work or helping other individuals! This type of behavior, from patient respect to the healthcare staffs' respect, should be the highlight of many conversations in the healthcare world. The mental health of a patient is critical in healing, something that is not well-known to many doctors who struggle diagnosing patients.
http://www.goupstate.com/articles/20170924/dr-lynette-gibson-says-nursing-is-thinking-of-person-behind-disease

https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/a_patient_not_a_person