Doctor-patient issues Flashcards
Dealing with the angry patient:
Dealing with the angry patient is challenging. A natural response to anger is defensiveness, but this can escalate the situation. The best approach is for the physician to first recognize the anger, acknowledge it, try to understand it, and respond to it. If a physician senses that a patient is angry, but the patient has not volunteered this information, it is important to explore the anger. If the patient seems very upset, it may make him/her angrier if the provider minimizes the situation by saying something like, “you seem a little upset.” If a patient is extremely angry, choose words that seem to match the intensity of his/her feelings. In some instances anger is displaced, and may be truly directed at the disease process or illness. In that case, the appropriate response is empathy.
