The first step in healing these harmful emotions is to align with the patient, while at the same time taking actions, no matter how small, to address systems issues as a team. Us vs Them means that the promise of the healthcare provider to the patient has been broken. Us vs Them contributes to provider dissatisfaction, a malignant work environment, and poor patient care. These negative emotions create an Us vs Them dynamic. These are all problems, big problems across all modern medical systems, and they need to be addressed, objectively and effectively.īut meantime, these negative emotions: annoyance, frustration, blaming, judgment, anger, fury, are harmful.

Yes, sometimes people make mistakes, for whatever reason. Yes, profit-minded insurance companies suck. Yes, glitches and miscommunications happen. Yes, it’s unreasonably difficult for patients to reach anyone who is interested and able to help them. But every time I placed blame elsewhere, it just made me feel worse. After all, I’m not the problem, right? It’s the system, it’s the technology, it’s other people, it’s insurance companies, it’s pharmacies. I had found myself uncomfortably annoyed, even infuriated! by all of this. But part of it is also human, errors due to confusion or complication or even sloppiness and laziness. Part of it is the admittedly clunky and buggy system, the glitches in what is still pretty new technology. Then there’s delays in reporting results, errors in prescriptions, endless difficulty with tests and studies… It feels like there is way more of this crap then there ever used to be.

By reach, they mean connect with someone who is interested and able to help them with whatever problem or request they have. Endless patients have complained–some in tears– about how difficult it is to reach anyone in our clinic. A lot of this is due to our admittedly clunky and buggy system. Specifically, I had been increasingly bogged down and frustrated with clinical care. This year, I began questioning my role and purpose in medicine. The long (and personal) version: I have been an attending physician and instructor for a decade now. If you take care of people, go get this book and read it now.

The short version: This is a must-read for all healthcare providers, and the best book on patient-provider communication that exists to date. It’s being incorporated into the curricula at several medical schools, and is used in healthcare provider communication courses all over the world. In Shock by physician author Rana Awdish was just published in October 2017, and already this remarkable memoir has garnered widespread praise from patients and providers alike.

In shock by dr rana awdish