PATIENT COMMUNICATION Flashcards
What are the internal factors for effective communication?
You must naturally like people, care about people, and willing to serve people, no matter what the circumstance.
What are the external factors for effective communication?
Have to look professional (clean uniform, clean shoes, every little thing counts), and practice professional etiquette (behaviour greatly reflects on you).
What is communication, and explain further as to why it’s important as a paramedic.
Communication is an act of transmitting information to another person. Verbal or nonverbal. Give patients your undivided attention, and be an ACTIVE listener (repeat key parts of a patient’s responses).
How do I develop a rapport with patients and why is it important to do so?
Watch your inflection (use calm voice), respond to the patient (acknowledge what the patient said), tell people who you are (A paramedic), use the patient’s name (Names are important shows respect), anticipate and deal with fear (reassurance may be the most important treatment), respect the importance of pain (Do something about it), respect and protect people’s modesty (especially with very old or very young), and HELP, don’t judge.
why do we conduct an interview?
To find out how they are feeling, what happened that may have made them sick or hurt them, and what their lives has been like. But if we are not careful as to how we are asking, we may not obtain the info that we need.
In conducting an interview, explain what open-ended, and closed-ended questions are.
Open ended are questions that do not have a yes or no answer. like “How have you been feeling lately?” and closed ended questions will have a specific answer like “ have you had any heart problems?”, or “diabetes?”.
In conducting an interview, explain what payoff questions are.
Pay off questions can reveal larger issues, like “have you ever felt like this before?” or “have you been upset about anything lately?”
What are the strategies to elicit useful responses to questions?
Facilitate a response(“please say more”), Be quiet, let them talk, clarify the response (ask if you don’t understand to show you are listening), redirect the response (be persistent so that they will open up more), interpret the response ( be vocal about it and explain to them what you think you heard and ask if you are correct.) , and lastly simplify and summarize the response (try to speak in simpler terms because communication could be hard for them and see if they agree with your synopsis.
What are the common interviewing errors?
Making assumptions, giving medical advice, providing false hope, assuming excessive authority, sidestepping the truth, and distancing yourself from patients.
What are the tools and skills for nonverbal?
Eye contact, touch, gentleness, posture, demeanour, therapeutic smile.
What do I need to do when assessing a mental status?
Appropriate humor, timing of responses to questions, memory (person, place, day, and event), and ability to obey simple commands
What are techniques when when you find yourself not communicating well with some patients?
People who are unmotivated, hostile, special challenges, and people who are very old or very young.
What are ways you can communicate across cultures?
Manner and hand gestures.
With body language what are some differences you may see when providing cross-cultural prehospital care.
Eye contact, bowing, touching the head, touching with left hand, feet, slouching, hands in pockets, sitting with legs crossed, hands on hips, and nodding.
If a patient has a visible stroke, what ways can you communicate to him/her?
Hand signals, you can ask the closed ended questions “yes or no”, or you can ask to write on paper
