Case Study #2
You are the nurse manager of a busy outpatient internal medicine clinic with 23 physicians on staff. While you are in your office working on the staff schedule for the next month, one of the nursing assistants rushes into your office to tell you that Mr. Altman, a patient who has been coming to the clinic regularly for the past 3 years, is on his way to see you and “He is really angry!” It has already been a hectic morning. Besides needing to complete the schedule, you also have a budget report due and you have to work in clinic this afternoon because one of the staff RNs is out on maternity leave and another is on vacation. Feeling very frustrated, you think to yourself, “This is not what I need today. I don’t have time to listen to a patient complain!” You also happen to know that Mr. Altman’s bill is more than 3 months past due and that on two occasions, the clinic social worker has given Mr. Altman bus vouchers to get home because he has no reliable transportation. Just then Mr. Altman enters your office and begins to complain that his doctor has violated his confidentiality rights.
a. Ask yes or no questions.
Yes or no questions are close ended questions. This could not be used to communicate with a person who is already in anger. These questions are focused to elicit specific piece of information.
And it's important that we adopt an 'open' stance, showing the person that we want to be there and are not desperate to rush away and do something else – standing well back from the person with your arms crossed and flicking your eyes constantly towards the door isn't exactly an encouragement to good communication!
When you have empathy, it means you can understand what a person is feeling in a given moment, and understand why other people's actions made sense to them.
Its always important that we are very positive in communication and assure that actions will be taken for their complaints.
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