by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
For weeks following hospital discharge after my “widow maker” heart attack, I kept forcing a “Fine, just fine!” smile when around others each day, desperately trying to make sense out of a cardiac diagnosis so shocking that it made no sense to me. What I later learned was that sense-making turns out to be a remarkably common early response to a serious medical crisis. Continue reading ““What? So what? Now what?” Self-reflection for the new heart patient”
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
Many of my Heart Sisters readers have told me over the years that they can precisely recall, word for word and even decades later, how doctors delivered bad news about a medical crisis. And these bad news conversations are recognized by medical researchers as “distressing and highly emotive tasks” for our physicians, too.(1) Continue reading “Doing a good job when breaking bad news to patients”
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
I watched a man recently telling the story of how he’d been “fired” by his cardiologist. All he had done to deserve this, he explained, was to use the f-word during a confrontation with the office receptionist. He complained that he’d been subsequently fired after this receptionist reported his outburst to her boss. He specifically blamed the terms of a recently implemented anti-bullying policy at the medical facility. Because of this stupid receptionist and this anti-bullying policy, he was now stuck in the unenviable state of being without a cardiologist.
No. No. And NO! It was his own decision to behave badly that accomplished that result for him. Not surprisingly, physicians, nurses, and other healthcare staff are fed up with bullies like That Guy, who act as if being a patient means you get a free pass to be a jerk.
It does not mean that at all – and I don’t care how sick you are. Continue reading “Being sick doesn’t excuse being a jerk”
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
After a particularly bizarre experience undergoing a treadmill stress echocardiogram at your hospital recently, I decided to do something that I have never done before. I called the Cardiology Department manager to file a report about her staff. (Incidentally, a recent opinion survey of international travellers found that Canadians were #1 in only one category: “Least likely to complain when things go wrong” – so you can appreciate that lodging an official complaint is a fairly Big Deal here!)
In my friendliest PR voice, I explained to the manager how distressing the appointment had been for me because of the behaviour of the two cardiac technicians in the room. Continue reading “Carolyn’s Top 10 Tips on How to Treat Your Patients”
Heart Sisters 