Health Professional and Patient Interaction E-Book

Ruth B. Purtilo, Amy M. Haddad, Regina F. Doherty

• Publisher: Saunders
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780323533638
• Edition: 9
• Topic: Medizin
• Subtopic: Physiotherapie, Physikalische & Rehabilitative Medizin

Easily navigate through the complicated and challenging world of daily on-the-job human interactions, with Health Professional and Patient Interaction, 9th Edition. Covering strategies for effective communication, this time-tested guide offers the tools you need to establish positive patient and interprofessional relationships built on respect. It not only covers respectful actions and good decision-making, but also demonstrates how those decisions directly shape your on-the-job success. Practical examples and authentic scenarios highlight how to apply respect and professionalism to coworkers and patients of various ages and various backgrounds across a wide spectrum of healthcare environments. It's the foundation you need to effectively and successfully communicate on the job.

• Overall emphasis on respect sets up a basis for building positive relationships with patients and fellow health professionals through good decision-making.
• UNIQUE! Authentic scenarios and examples demonstrate strategies and tools for effective communication with patients of all ages in a wide range of health care settings.
• UNIQUE! Interdisciplinary approach addresses issues that apply to many different healthcare disciplines to help you identify with your specific field as well as recognize themes that apply across the healthcare spectrum.
• Authentic patient cases give you a more personal connection as to how the various communications and actions discussed in the text affect the patient.
• Reflections Questions throughout the text challenge you to apply critical thinking skills and your personal experience to different scenarios.
• Questions for Thought and Discussion at the end of each section help you apply your knowledge to a variety of situations.

• UNIQUE! New chapter on respectful interprofessional collaboration and communication discusses best practices for respectfully interacting with one's coworkers across the professional health team.
• NEW & UNIQUE! Clearer integration of respect throughout the text underscores its necessity across the many different types of interactions between the health professional and patient.
• NEW! Introduction on how respect impacts a professional's practice has been added to Part One of the text and covers critical topics such as establishing a professional identity and creating healthy, respectful relationships while being mindful of boundaries within such relationships.
• NEW! Updated photos feature health professionals engaged in authentic clinical activities.

Section 1

Creating a Context of Respect

Outline

Introduction

Chapter 1. Respect in the Professional Role

Chapter 2. Professional Relatedness Built on Respect

Chapter 3. Professional Boundaries Guided by Respect

Introduction

As you enter the pages of this book about your health professional and patient encounters, the first thing we bring to your attention are some key features of this special relationship. Understanding them will help ensure lifelong satisfaction in your career.

Chapter 1 introduces the concept of respect and the central function it plays in the professional role. Respect is essential to a good working relationship between health professionals and patients and is expressed in the everyday practice of the professions as specific conduct and attitudes. One indicator or expression of respect takes the form of the professional’s sincere appreciation for the unique qualities of each person. Beyond that, respect is expressed through an acknowledgment that the other warrants the professional’s considered attention. The ultimate expression of respect toward the other is found in the professional’s genuine care for the patient.

Basic values—your own, those of the health professions, and society’s—constitute a firm foundation for this respect to take root and grow into appropriate conduct and attitudes toward the people who become your patients.

Chapter 2 describes four benchmarks that are standards for measuring whether respect is at the center of a health professional and patient relationship. They include evidence that (1) the patient has grounds to trust that the professional is acting in that person’s best interest, (2) the professional is addressing any deleterious effects of transference and countertransference that are influencing the relationship, (3) professional courtesy is being shown as part and parcel of the professional’s duty, and (4) genuine human care is being exercised, guided by the expectations and contours of the health professionals’ role in society, their specific scope of practice, and their commitment to providing optimum results in the interaction.

Chapter 3 continues to describe conduct and attitudes that express respect, this time in the form of a benchmark focused on professional constraints and sensitivities that honor the patient’s dignity, privacy, and vulnerabilities. They include physical, psychological, and emotional boundaries that shape a healthful and satisfying relationship. These boundaries have their roots in the experience and wisdom of health professionals and other professions in society that contribute to the type of relationship that is acceptable to all parties involved.

The chapters in Section 1 are optimistic in tone and content, as are we, about your opportunity to honor and help foster respect in the health professions.

Chapter 1

Respect in the Professional Role

Objectives

The reader will be able to:

• Give a brief definition of respect and three indicators that respect is being expressed

• Describe why respect based on the idea of human dignity is so central to the success of the health professional and patient relationship

• Identify three spheres of values that constitute a person’s value system

• Explain how one’s value system influences the respect shown to others

• Name several criteria that describe a profession as a social role

• Discuss why the professions today have become concerned about professionalism

• List some “universal” values that are especially relevant in a health professional and patient relationship based on respect

• Cite the benefits of a fully integrated value system and reasons why a person may choose not to abide by that standard at times

Prelude

His way isn’t the same as mine, nor mine as his. But we’re both in search of our destinies, and I respect him for that.

Paulo Coelho¹

Chances are you do not recall where you first encountered the idea of respect. For most it began with a parent or other authority rewarding you for your conduct or—if you were like most children—correcting you for attitudes or behaviors that implied you were doing something that was socially unacceptable. As you grew older, these teachings were reinforced until you realized that respect is a basic ingredient of getting along well in society. Respect involves treating others in ways that support a person’s confidence or self-worth. Hopefully, over time you were guided to understand that respect is part and parcel of living a full life and that at the core, respect is relational.

Whether you are preparing to enter a profession for the first time or are continuing to seek excellence in it through further study, being able to show and receive respect is a key to the satisfaction you will be able to realize over the course of your career as a health professional. You might, in fact, think of respect as a linchpin that holds together your professional identity. Without respect for (and from) others, you will inevitably find the paths you are choosing in your professional life veering off course.

What Is Respect?

Respect comes from the Latin root respicere, which means “to look at closely.” In common parlance, it has come to be interpreted as approaching an object, idea, person or group with regard or esteem.² This broad definition highlights that respect also applies to objects, situations, animals, and nature, but in your study of this book, we ask you to pay the most attention to its relevance for person-to-person interactions. In this context, respect for another conveys, “you matter,” “you are worth the trouble.” No matter how extreme our circumstances, we as humans hope above all that others will not discount our need to be somebody, that we will be sympathetically accompanied through the most difficult and unlikable or threatening aspects of our struggles. And when we rejoice, we hope others will join us in our celebration of happiness or accomplishment. In other words, we count on others’ respect for who we are in a very fundamental sense, a recognition that we all are human. Many writers have tried to explain that this expectation arises because humans have basic worth. They agree that we share a common essence they term dignity. Even the ancients, in their myths, described this common essence, a theme also explored in virtually all the world’s major religious traditions.³ The essence is often referred to as the inherent dignity of persons to help emphasize that it resides beyond the physical, social, or psychological characteristics that distinguish us from each other.⁴

Inherent dignity is deeply ingrained in the idea of a profession. The assumption being that there is a common thread of humanity that warrants basic regard of a person as such. In your study of this book, we will help you look for specific evidence of this respect through such everyday actions as the tone of your voice when you address a patient, the adaptation of your pace and body language to meet the needs of a child versus an elderly patient, your trustworthy keeping of a patient confidence, your attention to cultural differences, your presence during a crisis, and your willingness to work together with a patient’s support system, including family, significant others, and care providers.

Your skilled interventions can foster confidence that each patient is worthy to participate in health-related decisions that protect meaning in his or her life. Your communications can convey that you have the patients’ back and that your intent is to protect them from exploitation or harm and advocate for them in ways that will be to their benefit.

Three Indicators of Respect

Three general indicators of respect will help you recognize a respectful health professional and patient relationship. The following indicators are described to take you a step further in helping you understand the deeper relational dynamics that take place in respectful conduct and communications within it.

• 1. Appreciation. Respect as appreciation means that you, a health professional, take notice of a person’s unique character, manner, physical attributes, personality, and needs. This type of appreciation is not directed to a patient’s superficial traits but serves as a tool to distinguish this individual from being one of a nameless crowd. In other words, you have not approached such an appraisal to make a positive or negative judgment about the person but rather to more fully “see” him or her as a unique individual. This expression of respect is illustrated in the comment by author Paulo Coelho at the beginning of this chapter. For the character in this novel just knowing that each is on a journey with a destiny in mind is basis enough for him to respect the other. More details of this aspect of respect based on our differences are emphasized in Chapter 5 and illustrated throughout this book.
• 2. Attentiveness. Respect as attentiveness means that you consciously turn your attention more fully to the person. Your stance comes from having taken note of the other as a unique individual, and this knowledge affects your encounter insofar as you move toward engaging him or her in a specific way consistent with the characteristics, needs, values, and conditions that have brought you to this point in your encounter. In Chapter 2 we take up the idea of becoming “patient-centered,” which further highlights how respect conveyed as attentiveness is an essential indicator of a successful health professional and patient relationship.
• 3. Care. Respect as care—and its active form, caring—is the ultimate indicator of respect and goes to the heart of the professional relationship. It invites something of you that includes the appreciation of and attentiveness toward another, as discussed previously, but goes deeper. Now you commit yourself to providing appropriate measures demonstrating that you genuinely respect a person’s worth as a human being. In other words, this indicator of respect involves a willingness to involve yourself as a human being in relationship with another. Care is conveyed not only by your actions but also by attitudes that reflect who you really are. For instance, in your professional role your negative feelings toward a person do not give you permission to limit your responsibility toward him or her but rather require you to find a means by which this person’s reasonable goals can be met. Moreover, you must include but go beyond the sole application of the technical skills of your profession to consider the well-being of the whole person as your everyday standard of this care. For this reason, health professionals sometimes are referred to as care providers. There is no one set formula for this core aspect of the relationship, though basic characteristics of professional care are addressed later in this chapter and Chapters 2 and 3. An exploration of its many ...