At the University of Upnorth
I work all over the North of England helping in the teaching of Communication Skills to students of medicine, nursing, physiotherapy, dentistry - -
At the University of Upnorth yesterday, some nursing students were practising their counselling skills on me. I was playing a patient with mental health problems (insert your own cheap gag here, go on, I don't mind.)
They were being taught, extremely well, by one of their tutors, many of the different building blocks of a successful counselling session. Introducing yourself to the patient. Body language - how to sit, how to make appropriate eye contact, how to keep still and not fidget. How to develop empathy with the patient. How to find out the crucial issues by asking a mixture of open questions and closed questions.
(In case you don't know, an open question can have any answer: "How are you feeling today?" A closed question has one answer: "Where does it hurt?" "My arm.")
How to summarise what the patient has told them. How to show you're listening. Finally, how to finish the session and get the patient to leave the room.
Aaah - - all that's common sense, say many people, why do they need to be taught that?
Well, any kind of contact with some of the more old-fashioned of our medical professionals will show why, all too clearly. You can probably all think of an example where a tactless doctor or nurse has said something really stupid to you. If they practise with a Simulated Patient, as we're called - someone acting the role of a patient - then, if they do say something daft, it's a safe learning environment where it doesn't matter. Even in that setting, once they realise what they've said it makes them determined never to do it again.
Yesterday's student nurses were all excellent - and, because of this, they understood that actually it's jolly difficult to get it right, especially with a distressed patient.
When asked for feedback they all said "Ohhhh - - it was SO difficult!" and had to be reassured, complete with lots of evidence, that they had done very well.
Sometimes you get a student who thinks there's nothing to it, or one who just has naturally poor interpersonal skills. I don't know how they still slip through into training, but a few do. Teaching them communication skills - the very basics of what to say and do - should at least ensure that they reach a basic level of ability.
Some of them, though, can, though only in their late teens or early twenties, put all the elements together seamlessly and add a big dollop of empathy and compassion. Sometimes they're so brilliant it's breathtaking.
Those are the ones we'll want to see when we're ill.
At the University of Upnorth yesterday, some nursing students were practising their counselling skills on me. I was playing a patient with mental health problems (insert your own cheap gag here, go on, I don't mind.)
They were being taught, extremely well, by one of their tutors, many of the different building blocks of a successful counselling session. Introducing yourself to the patient. Body language - how to sit, how to make appropriate eye contact, how to keep still and not fidget. How to develop empathy with the patient. How to find out the crucial issues by asking a mixture of open questions and closed questions.
(In case you don't know, an open question can have any answer: "How are you feeling today?" A closed question has one answer: "Where does it hurt?" "My arm.")
How to summarise what the patient has told them. How to show you're listening. Finally, how to finish the session and get the patient to leave the room.
Aaah - - all that's common sense, say many people, why do they need to be taught that?
Well, any kind of contact with some of the more old-fashioned of our medical professionals will show why, all too clearly. You can probably all think of an example where a tactless doctor or nurse has said something really stupid to you. If they practise with a Simulated Patient, as we're called - someone acting the role of a patient - then, if they do say something daft, it's a safe learning environment where it doesn't matter. Even in that setting, once they realise what they've said it makes them determined never to do it again.
Yesterday's student nurses were all excellent - and, because of this, they understood that actually it's jolly difficult to get it right, especially with a distressed patient.
When asked for feedback they all said "Ohhhh - - it was SO difficult!" and had to be reassured, complete with lots of evidence, that they had done very well.
Sometimes you get a student who thinks there's nothing to it, or one who just has naturally poor interpersonal skills. I don't know how they still slip through into training, but a few do. Teaching them communication skills - the very basics of what to say and do - should at least ensure that they reach a basic level of ability.
Some of them, though, can, though only in their late teens or early twenties, put all the elements together seamlessly and add a big dollop of empathy and compassion. Sometimes they're so brilliant it's breathtaking.
Those are the ones we'll want to see when we're ill.
posted by Daphne at 2:42 pm
4 Comments:
That does sound reassuring, and I agree that a lot of the 'old school' have atrocious bedside manners. A relief that the next generation are being trained to treat patients like actual people.
Ok I can't stand the suspense.....what was your prognosis ?
That's as cheap as I can get !!
Iant
Yes, Siegfried - and I think in MOST hospitals this training should be beginning to filter through - -
And Ian, as for my prognosis - - well, I have to go back next week. Which, in real time, is in two weeks. And there were two groups so I have to try to remember to which group I've told what - - tricky!
Surely 'Where does it hurt?' is an open question? [As opposed to say, 'Does you arm hurt?']
I'm glad to see nurses are getting training in communication skills, though they have always been good in this department compared to doctors.
During my one and only stay in hospital I found it was the cleaner who had the best commuication skills - she was the only one who treated me like a person and asked me questions like I was normal and not some drivelling simpleton.
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