Inside The Mind Of A Physician

Simple solutions that everyone can do to create an exceptional patient experience. Hospitals are so clinically oriented they often overlook the emotional and relational aspects of patient care, which is how many patients judge their experience. When caregivers let patients know who they are, what they do, and why they care it creates a great sense of hope, trust, and belonging.

Are physicians a mystery? To many of us, yes. Physicians perform one of the most valuable personal services in the world. They care for our bodies in the most intimate of ways. We place our lives in their hands and trust they have our best interest at heart. But how much do we really know of physicians and their inner world? Relatively little. The environment for practicing medicine has changed dramatically over the past few decades. The commoditizing of physicians and their work frequently causes a dehumanization of the doctor and the doctor/patient relationship not to mention the connections between physicians and other staff. Due to the training, practice culture, constraints, liabilities, and pressures placed on physicians today, they often cannot practice the kind of personalized, relationship-enhancing medicine that would benefit both patient and caregiver. In this monograph Dr. Herdley Paolini does a great service by opening the inner world of physicians and helping us understand them, how to relate to them, and how to best support them in their critical role in healthcare. Her insights will be of great value to everyone from hospital administrators and clinical staff, to insurance providers, government agencies, and anyone who interacts with physicians. The Florida Hospital Healthcare & Leadership Monograph Series is an innovative teaching and learning tool from the largest admitting hospital in America. Monographs in this series provide focused, relevant training to individuals and organizations on a wide variety of healthcare and leadership topics.Ideal for healthcare professionals, leadership innovators, researchers, teachers, students, and other pioneering professionals each volume provides the latest information and break-through thinking on the subject in a clear, concise, readable form.

By inviting the Dalai Lama and leading researchers in medicine, psychology, and neuroscience to join in conversation, the Mind & Life Institute set the stage for a fascinating exploration of the healing potential of the human mind. The Mind’s Own Physician presents in its entirety the thirteenth Mind and Life dialogue, a discussion addressing a range of vital questions concerning the science and clinical applications of meditation: How do meditative practices influence pain and human suffering? What role does the brain play in emotional well-being and health? To what extent can our minds actually influence physical disease? Are there important synergies here for transforming health care, and for understanding our own evolutionary limitations as a species? Edited by world-renowned researchers Jon Kabat-Zinn and Richard J. Davidson, this book presents this remarkably dynamic interchange along with intriguing research findings that shed light on the nature of the mind, its capacity to refine itself through training, and its role in physical and emotional health.

Dr. Joseph Bujak provides an insider's perspective on the beliefs and behaviors of physicians. His insight will prompt you to question your assumptions and break through the barriers that may be keeping you from forming productive relationships with the physicians in your organization. He also provides suggestions for using your new understanding to influence physician behavior and promote enduring partnerships. With candor and wit, Dr. Bujak shares the wisdom he has developed through his years of experience as both a physician and an administrator: A physician's sense of time is very different from that of an administrator Being chief of staff is the equivalent of drawing the short straw A physician's definition of teamwork is like the game of golf Traditional medical staff organization is not the vehicle for developing relationships with physicians A good role model for influencing physician behavior is the old TV character Columbo You should approach change using the metaphor of moving a Slinky Generation-X physicians differ greatly from traditionalist, or baby boomer, physicians; propositions acceptable to Generation-X physicians will be rejected by the others, and vice versa

Steven E. Hodes, M.D., initially trained in traditional, high-caliber medical programs that led him through graduation at the Albert Einstein Medical School and to a fellowship at Mount Sinai Hospital. But many years later, he saw something vital missing in his approach to healthcare. I was trained as a physician, not a healer...taught to view the patient as a machine suffering from some mechanical failure. My purpose was to be the best diagnostician possible, he explains. Then events occurred that opened the eyes of this now veteran physician to deep insights about the mind-body-spirit connection. That awakening moved him to a metaphysical view of health—a view more spiritual than religious, but still firmly grounded in science. Embracing his role as a metaphysician, he also began to see himself as a meta-physician, or doctor transformed (meta) by this new awareness. In this book, Hodes describes his journey to becoming a metaphysician on call. He points out profound, yet simple, observations and beliefs that affect our perception of the nature of reality—metaphysics—which, in turn, can largely affect our well-being in all senses—body, mind, and spirit. We all can and should take responsibility for our own well-being on all levels, he explains. This book is designed to inspire us to ask our own questions, and gather our own evidence to enhance all areas of our lives and well-being, and so find healing and peace.

On average, a physician will interrupt a patient describing her symptoms within eighteen seconds. In that short time, many doctors decide on the likely diagnosis and best treatment. Often, decisions made this way are correct, but at crucial moments they can also be wrong—with catastrophic consequences. In this myth-shattering book, Jerome Groopman pinpoints the forces and thought processes behind the decisions doctors make. Groopman explores why doctors err and shows when and how they can—with our help—avoid snap judgments, embrace uncertainty, communicate effectively, and deploy other skills that can profoundly impact our health. This book is the first to describe in detail the warning signs of erroneous medical thinking and reveal how new technologies may actually hinder accurate diagnoses. How Doctors Think offers direct, intelligent questions patients can ask their doctors to help them get back on track. Groopman draws on a wealth of research, extensive interviews with some of the country’s best doctors, and his own experiences as a doctor and as a patient. He has learned many of the lessons in this book the hard way, from his own mistakes and from errors his doctors made in treating his own debilitating medical problems. How Doctors Think reveals a profound new view of twenty-first-century medical practice, giving doctors and patients the vital information they need to make better judgments together.

A renowned diagnostician shares stories of his patients and explores the importance of the human factor in medicine. In The Art of Medicine, Toronto Western Hospital’s internist Dr. Herbert Ho Ping Kong draws on his vast dossier of personal cases and five decades as a clinician to examine the core principles of a patient-centered approach to diagnosis and treatment. While HPK, as he is fondly known, recognizes and applauds the many invaluable innovations in medical technology, he makes the point that as disease and its management grow increasingly complex, physicians must learn to develop an arsenal of more basic skills, actively using the arts of seeing, hearing, palpation, empathy, and advocacy to provide a more humane and holistic form of care. Aimed at medical practitioners, aspiring doctors, or anyone interested in health and medicine, this book also contains interviews with more than a dozen of HPK’s patients, as well as short essays that explore the thinking of his professional colleagues on the art of medicine.

A look at the emotional side of medicine—the shame, fear, anger, anxiety, empathy, and even love that affect patient care Physicians are assumed to be objective, rational beings, easily able to detach as they guide patients and families through some of life’s most challenging moments. But doctors’ emotional responses to the life-and-death dramas of everyday practice have a profound impact on medical care. And while much has been written about the minds and methods of the medical professionals who save our lives, precious little has been said about their emotions. In What Doctors Feel, Dr. Danielle Ofri has taken on the task of dissecting the hidden emotional responses of doctors, and how these directly influence patients. How do the stresses of medical life—from paperwork to grueling hours to lawsuits to facing death—affect the medical care that doctors can offer their patients? Digging deep into the lives of doctors, Ofri examines the daunting range of emotions—shame, anger, empathy, frustration, hope, pride, occasionally despair, and sometimes even love—that permeate the contemporary doctor-patient connection. Drawing on scientific studies, including some surprising research, Dr. Danielle Ofri offers up an unflinching look at the impact of emotions on health care. With her renowned eye for dramatic detail, Dr. Ofri takes us into the swirling heart of patient care, telling stories of caregivers caught up and occasionally torn down by the whirlwind life of doctoring. She admits to the humiliation of an error that nearly killed one of her patients and her forever fear of making another. She mourns when a beloved patient is denied a heart transplant. She tells the riveting stories of an intern traumatized when she is forced to let a newborn die in her arms, and of a doctor whose daily glass of wine to handle the frustrations of the ER escalates into a destructive addiction. But doctors don’t only feel fear, grief, and frustration. Ofri also reveals that doctors tell bad jokes about “toxic sock syndrome,” cope through gallows humor, find hope in impossible situations, and surrender to ecstatic happiness when they triumph over illness. The stories here reveal the undeniable truth that emotions have a distinct effect on how doctors care for their patients. For both clinicians and patients, understanding what doctors feel can make all the difference in giving and getting the best medical care.