Patient care

Patient Care

September 17, 2013

The Medical profession isn’t all about treating illness it’s also about enhancing patient care in any way possible. Patient care has a variety of benefits and all can improve the quality of life for both practical and vocational nurses and the people they care for. Patient care involves the sharing of information with patients that is tailored to their particular needs, beliefs and expectations. It’s important to remember that patients are people, not just the illnesses they have, and should be treated with compassion and respect. Giving quality patient care can absolutely have an effect and can improve to more positive patient experience and can improve the physical and mental things of life for people with serious illness. Patient care has variety of positive effects beyond health outcomes.

There are plenty of things that medical professionals can do to improve patient care but the most important thing is to be completely open and honest when sharing information with the patient and his or her family about the condition in their health care have a better medical outcome. Take the time to clearly and thoroughly explain the fact of the situation and it will do a great deal to improve patient care. Patients know their bodies and their illnesses and know when something’s gone wrong. Patients can communicate changes and observations that can make a real difference in their medical care. To have their voice heard patients have to speak up.

This might sound obvious but many times patient are intimidated by the medical world around them. Also it can be hard to speak up if the doctor or nurse is rushed and ready to move on to the next patient. Patient care has now made it to center stage in discussions of quality. Insurance payments are increasingly linked to the provision of patient care. Lost in many of the discussions of patient care however the essential and revolutionary meaning of what it means to is be a patient.

Patient are known as persons in context of their own social worlds listened to informed, respected and involved in their care and their wishes are honored but during their health care journey there have been concerns that patient care with its focus on individual needs might be at odds with an evidence based approach which tends to focus on populations patient care is a quality of personal, professional and organizational relationships.

As a medical assistant student we are taught from day one that we must show empathy and consideration towards our patients. I chose to discuss the nurse’s role because in reality he or she normally spends the most time with the patient. It isn’t always the nurse who should uphold these standards of empathy. It is very important to have empathy in the medical field. imagine yourself lying in a hospital bed feeling sick, sacred and helpless, the only comforting thought is supposed to be knowing that when you need something a nurse is there to help. You ring the call bell for assistance to go the restroom and no one comes. You ring the bell again and still no one comes. You ring it for the third time and a voice comes over the speaker “I will be with you in a few min I have something to finish up”. You need to get out of bed right now and you can’t do it alone.

Now on top of everything else you’re feeling alone and frustrated. If someone doesn’t appear soon you will have to deal with embarrassment and shame of an accident. On top of being sick look how many others things a patient may have to go through just because of something as simple as no one coming when you ring that call bell. A nurse’s job is not just medical. A good nurse must be empathetic and aware of the patient’s feelings and needs. Empathy is making sure the patient receives comfort, compassion, sensitivity and understanding qualities that are essential for any doctor, nurse or caregiver. For patients a lack of empathy from physician or nurse can be interpreted as they don’t care. Patients are human beings and need to be treated as such.

It’s terrible to say but in our society today it is much too common to hear horror stories of people in a hospital who were treated more like a number or a diagnosis than a human being. Something definitely has to be done about the way patients are treated in the health care facilities. We all know how we want to be respected and treated like human beings when we are well but it is that much more important to be treated with these qualities when we are ill. It affects the way we think the way we behave and sometimes even our healing process. How many times have we all been in a hospital or nursing home where we here the all too familiar phrases “he just doesn’t have the will to live” or “she is just giving up?” I need to ask myself why are they giving up or why don’t they have the will to live? I personally feel that if people like this were given respect, empathy and a little compassion it might just give them something to be hopeful for and they might have the will to go.

If we are depresses have no self-esteem or think that nobody cares chances are our bodies are not going to heal as quickly or maybe not even at all. I know time is an important issue in our society and a lot of us don’t have any but we need to step back and remember that we are all human and need to be treated as such. It may just save someone life. Patient seeks empathy from their physicians. Yet in seeking to making empathy a reliable professional skill doctors change the meaning of the term. Outside the field of medicine empathy is a mode of understanding that specifically involves emotional resonance there is a long standing tension in the physician’s role. Doctors strive for detachment to reliably care for all patients regardless of their personal feelings. Yet patients want genuine empathy from doctors and doctors want to provide it.

Medical educators and professional bodies increasingly recognize the importance of empathy but they define empathy in a special way to be essentially affective mode of understanding. Empathy involves being moved by another’s experiences it goes without saying that physicians cannot fully experience the suffering of each patient. This assumes that experiencing emotion is unimportant for understanding what a patient is feeling. Empathetic and supportive care should not just be given to patient with health problems but also to woman who are experiencing the birthing process. Having a child should be such a positive experience and nurse who show a humanistic quality in their care can make a big difference in the labor and birthing process woman in labor are much stressed, tired, anxious and are experiencing tremendous amounts of discomfort.

The last thing they need is a nurse who is not attentive and non-compliant. These behaviors can make the whole child birthing process that much more difficult to deal with. I know because I ended up having all of my children by C-section and my experience was not a good one. There was no medical reason why this happened and I am not implying that it was entirely the staff’s fault. I was very stressed and tired and I received very little understanding from the nurse staff. When I would ask for anything for pain they would tell me they would check into it and then they would never come back with a response. I received very little smiles or conversation. A couple of times my husband and I saw them rolling their eyes when I asked for anything. You would have thought I was asking them for a million dollars.

They expressed very little empathy and I felt more like a bother to them than anything else. I mentally and physically gave up before I even started pushing. I feel when no one else cares it really puts a damper on your self-esteem and affects your whole thought process. I truly believe that had I been given a little more support and understanding thing may have turned out a little differently. And maybe would have needed to have C-section done. Patient confidentiality is a person’s right to have their personal information kept private. Any medical data gathered from a patient should not be disclosed to anybody else without the patient’s permission. Confidentiality is a crucial part of the doctor patient relationship. It is very important that a patient trust their doctor there are several important reasons why patient confidentiality should be respected. First breaching a patient’s confidentiality destroys trust which is an important aspect in physician patient relationships.

Second if this trust is breached patients may have a difficult time trusting doctors and disclosing pertinent information in the future. Lastly betraying a patient’s trust this way is in direct opposition to that individual’s right for autonomy. There are many instances on a daily basis where patient’s medical data must be disclosed. Some examples of this are for payment reason for insurance companies for health related services or benefits for research purposes for fundraising activities for treatment alternatives or when the law requires it. These are all pretty clear unavoidable reasons for patient’s disclosure and are generally uncontroversial. There are however other times when situations arise where it is not clear how to handle the issue of confidentiality. One example of this is if disclosing would be in the greater public interest such as if details of serious crime or intended crime were revealed. Another example is in cases where a child who is the patient is being abused. A nurse to make sure that patient documents do not fall into the wrong hands. The misplacement of one chart could cost not only the trust of the patient and the patient’s family but the hospital’s reputation.

How to talk to patient ‘s as well as helping patients understand how to comprehend what may be wrong with them is important in the medical field. Doctors tend to give the specific terminology that many patients do not understand. Nurses are the ones who explain what the doctor has said in simpler terms. Another discourse that can be included in the nursing profession is the ability to communicate with patient directly and to comfort patients as well as their family and friends. Nurses must be alert and quick to respond because they are usually the first people in a patients room. By building responsive relationships with patients one will gain the respect trust and mutuality from the patient. This can provide the best of relationships between nurses and patients. If a nurse is alert and able to communication with patients on a level that they understand then that nurse has become more than just a nurse he or she has become a person with morals.

For each one to take on the needs, wishes, desires of others to be able to put aside the needs or wants of one self can be hard thing to do for some people. To be a nurse a person has to be willing to care for patients not to follow the rules but by explaining things making small talk with them being responsive and to be their friend. The kind of trust a patient has towards a nurse can alter that patient’s attitude towards that hospital which is why gaining the trust of patient is key. It all starts with patient confidentiality and if patients can actually trust the hospital with their most personal information they will have more confidence in their nurses as well as their doctors.