Balancing patient emotions and healthcare efficiency: How do you navigate this delicate balance?

Something I find helpful is to acknowledge first. Regardless of the ability to understand, agree/disagree, acknowledgement allows the patient to feel supported and connection between the patient and physician can begin to grow.

A healthy relationship with patients improves the quality of healthcare in society, according to the community CPhT experience. As community CPhTs, we are better acquainted with our patients' emotional backgrounds. As a result, we can gain an understanding of the patients' personnel situation. We can help with finances and have time to listen to problems and understand the patient's mental state. Medication does not always work, we can provide mental support along with it. We organise and attend events and festivals with patients. Organising sample medications for financially disadvantaged patients, hosting free medical camps, and so on all contribute to better relationships.As a result, a high-quality healthcare system has arisen.

The key component of the healthcare system is an effective and up-to-date system and team. As a community pharmacy, we want to keep patient data categorised by lifestyle disorders, mental or psychological problems, auto-immune diseases, cancer, HIV or other STDs, and so on, because it is critical for providing timely medical assistance. Collecting and storing Communication Data aids in the updating of the patient's current status and medicine availability.In addition, we can provide patient counselling.As a result, we want to go with the professionally updated system and teams. As a Community Pharmacy and Staff, we play an important role in the development of the Community Health Care System.

Communication also has to be personalized. Important things to consider include: (1) cultural aspects - who else should be present, what is the context and meaning in which this information is being heard (2) health language literacy - of course a paid medical translator is needed for those who speak another language, but we often don't consider sufficiently who is adept at "medicalese." We need to state everything at about a grade 8 level of understanding. (3) neurodivergence - many people have brains that process information and express emotions in varying ways. Becoming more familiar with how ADHD, autism, trauma, and other forms of difference may hear and understand information is key. Learning to share non-verbally helps too.

I run a company called Safer Spaces Training and we help professionals understand psychological first aid (think - panic attacks, dissociation) and trauma-informed spaces. Part of the work is learning self-regulation in order to co-regulate. If we aren't experts on our own nervous system states, we might inadvertently contribute to the intense dysregulation in our patients or clients. Some of the issue is moral distress and empathy fatigue. Dealing with emotions can feel abusive or impossible if there are structural harms on both sides. So there are both systemic and individual solutions needed.

In family medicine training, we learn to "FIFE" - or to elicit the "feelings, ideas, fears, and expectations" of the patients. This is just one step in person-centred care. We need to truly embody an understanding that patients are experts in their own experience - their history, their ancestors, their past, and their body. As clinicians, we have a lot of training about illness processes, but each is unique. Lean on their expertise.