Every healthcare practitioner will have a patient where the treatment or procedure results in an unfavorable outcome. This leaves the patient vulnerable, upset, and wanting an explanation on what went wrong and why. As a practitioner, it can be hard to face the patient and answer these difficult questions. Here are some tips on communicating with a patient after they have had a bad outcome that maintains professionalism while reestablishing trust:
- Acknowledge the situation and what happened. It’s better to address the elephant first in the room before getting into the details of the situation.
- If there were multiple people involved, be sure to get a detailed account of what happened to be able to effectively communicate that with the patient.
- Understand where the patient stands and how they feel. Think about what you would want to hear if you were in their shoes and tailor your statements and responses to reflect that understanding.
- Take into account what the patient would like to happen moving forward and incorporate that, to the degree that is medically possible, into your treatment plan.
- Allow the patient room to speak about the situation, how it has affected them, and what they would like to see moving forward.
- Don’t try to explain things that are unknown. Although it can be tempting to fill awkward silences or explain possible reasons why a thing occurred — you don’t want to open the door to liability for yourself and false hope for the patient.
- Be transparent. Provide the patient with medical records and be sure to review the patient’s chart and history in-depth before the meeting.
Although this feels like you are going against everything that you have ever learned in medicine, data has shown that this may be effective at decreasing liability and claims. I hope we begin to have these conversations more openly to educate both patients and providers on malfeasance and malpractice to avoid unnecessary litigation. If you or your organization is interested in learning more about avoiding lawsuits and decreasing liability then please check out my website to learn more.
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Sources
capphysicians.com
slideshare.net
