Bedside Manner

Bedside Manner: How to Gain Your Patients' Respect, Love & Loyalty is the definitive textbook on bedside manner. This book teaches all healthcare providers how to manage the needs, wants and fears of their patients. Bedside Manner explores a multitude of techniques to make better doctors, all based on Dr. Fleisher's six pillars of great bedside manner: compassion, communication, confidence, character, class and comedy/charisma. Every healthcare provider and every patient benefits from a great bedside manner. Through lessons, scripts, the shared experiences of Dr. Fleisher and other specialists and their staff members, and an extra dollop of humor, Bedside Manner guides health-care practitioners of any age through simple steps to improve their attitude, their patient care, their practice, and even the quality of their own lives while also protecting against lawsuits. Seems like a big promise? Bedside Manner is a big idea that has been executed brilliantly. Bedside Manner is not just about charisma. By developing and instituting practice management systems, Dr. Fleisher teaches how office design, employee and doctor scripts, interpersonal techniques, and the six pillars of bedside manner combine to build a practice and to make sure your patients remain loyal, are kept happy, and love you. Bedside Manner is not just for new practitioners. Any competent practitioner with a sincere desire to provide better care, build his or her practice and avoid lawsuits can do so if they follow the program set out in, Bedside Manner: How to Gain Your Patients' Respect, Love & Loyalty. Bedside Manner is not just for doctors. Everyone in the allied healthcare professions who comes in contact with patients needs to have the knowledge and skills described in the pages of this book. Physicians, dentists, chiropractors, nurses, assistants, physical therapists, nutritionists, are just a few of the practitioners who need to read Bedside Manner. It is page after page of transformative magic.

In Hong Kong the responsibility for building and operating hospitals used to be shared by the Government of Hong Kong and a number of charities, including religious orders, some with traditions dating back to the earliest times. Unfortunately this dual system of government and subvented hospitals was not integrated, leading to problems of coordination and management and resulting in gaps and duplication in services, inefficient and ineffective use of resources, as well as low staff morale. The problems persisted against a background of significant population growth, rising community expectations, and technological advancement. Fundamental and radical solutions were needed. Overseas experts were invited by the Hong Kong Government to study the situation in the mid-1980s. Finally the Government adopted their proposal and set up an autonomous body, the Hospital Authority, to tackle this crucial problem. The development of this local health care system since the 1980s, the setting up of the Hospital Authority and its work in the past few years form the subject of this book.

Why is it that some businesses seem to get it when it comes to customer experience, while others miss it completely? The same could be said of medical practices. Doctors are constantly looking for new ways to improve their practices. The problem is they're often looking in the wrong places. Beyond Bedside Manner guides the practice to redefine the doctor-patient relationship in ways that create much more value for the doctor, the patient, and the practice. With insights gained across 3 decades of working with practices across many specialties, author Shareef Mahdavi shows the way to build the modern practice based on creating a memorable patient experience on par with our best customer experiences.

Have you ever wondered what life is like on the other side of the stethoscope? Combining the grace and precision of a poet with a down-to-earth, compassionate manner, physician and NPR commentator David Watts reveals what it’s really like to be a doctor today. From difficult diagnoses, irreverent colleagues, brave survivors, and examining room embarrassments, Watts uncovers the world of contemporary medicine and shares the emotional truths and practical realities at the heart of every doctor-patient relationship. Watts’s warmhearted and understanding attitude toward his patients—and their foibles—is evident on every page of this surprising, poignant, and intimate look inside the life of a doctor who could very easily be your own.

Most people have encountered a situation with an ill friend or relative when it has been difficult to know what to say or do. Even pastors and others in ministry are often at a loss when encountered with a critically ill person who is looking to them for some comfort and guidance. Katie Maxwell's Bedside Manners provides the reader practical directions for offering care in a variety of settings, including hospitals, the homes of shut-ins, and nursing homes. She even addresses often overlooked concerns-such as the pastoral care of children, caregivers, and patients who are dying-and offers intelligent advice like be prepared, be human, be silent, and be positive. Highly practical and inspiring, Bedside Manners is essential reading for anyone who has felt uncomfortable when trying to comfort the sick.

The search for a set of skills which can be identified and taught as 'good clinical communication' has been of considerable value in persuading decision makers at medical schools and other bodies that communication matters. These days, very large numbers of medical schools use what are essentially skills-based models, such as the extraordinarily thorough Calgary-Cambridge approach. However, I believe that the emphasis on communication' as simply a set of skills, such as eye contact, open questions and so on, has badly skewed the development of the discipline. The teaching of "communication skills" in fact strikes me as a very small part of what I do, not a very difficult part for the majority of students, and - whisper it - one which is often pretty dull...In "Language and Clinical Communication", John Skelton critically considers the theory behind this complex field. His wide-ranging approach reflects on the recent developments within the medical humanities and reflects on his controversial stance; questioning the relevance of skill-based teaching in the clinical arena in an accessible, easy to read manner. You will find Skelton's light-hearted and open-minded attitude to the topic unquestionably illuminating.

As Joyce Novak’s daughter, Marnie, completes medical school and looks ahead to a surgical internship, her wedding, and a future filled with promise, a breast cancer diagnosis throws Joyce’s own future into doubt. Always the caregiver, Joyce feels uncomfortable in the patient role, especially with her husband and daughter. As she progresses through a daunting treatment regimen including a biopsy, lumpectomy, and radiation, she distracts herself by planning Marnie’s wedding. When the sudden death of a young heroin addict in Marnie’s care forces Marnie to come face-to-face with mortality and her professional inadequacies, she also realizes she must strike a new balance between her identity as a doctor and her role as a supportive daughter. At the same time, she struggles with the stark differences between her fiancé’s family background and her own and comes to understand the importance of being with someone who shares her values and experiences. Amid this profound soul-searching, both Joyce and Marnie’s futures change in ways they never would have expected.

In recent years, there has been growing awareness of the need for interprofessional cooperation in healthcare. Countless studies have shown that genuine teamwork and team intelligence are critical to patient safety. Poor communication among health care personnel is a major factor in hospital errors, even more so than the level of staff competence and experience. This is why many schools for health professionals and major health care employers now promote interprofessional education and cooperation. Bedside Manners is a play about workplace relations among physicians, nurses, others who work in health care, and patients—and how their interaction affects the quality of patient care, for better or worse. The accompanying workbook helps educators, managers, patient safety advocates, administrators, and union representatives to analyze and discuss the issues raised in the play. When presented in hospitals, universities, and health care conferences all over the United States, Bedside Manners invariably sparks a vibrant conversation about patient safety problems and how to solve them, job satisfaction and stress, and the importance of information sharing and mutual respect. As text or script, this play is a unique teaching tool for medical and nursing schools, and other health professional schools and continuing education programs involving health care clinicians and staff of all kinds.