“Do you ever feel tense at work? Maybe when the old, crotchety patient doesn’t like you and lets you know it, or when you have to give the thrashing kid a shot? What about when a patient’s husband [or father] takes his voice up to 11, or you have to give your patient the worst news of their life?”
Bedside manner is a phrase typically thrown around in the context of physicians. But what does "bedside manner" really mean? It depends who you ask.
According to Merriam-Webster & Dictionary.com:
: the manner that a physician assumes toward patients
: the attitude, approach, and deportment of a doctor with patients
But then what would you call the manner that nurses, therapists, phlebotomists, social workers, pharmacists, case managers, child-life therapists, or physician assistants assume towards patients?
Physicians no longer rule the world of healthcare, and it’s time that’s reflected.
We’ve had enough with how things have always been.
It’s time healthcare gets with the program.
Bedside manner applies to all clinicians alike and it’s not any more important for one over another. We all need to know how to really get through to patients, how to feel comfortable in all the discomfort, and how to help healthcare go well, for every patient, every time.
Bedside Manners For the Healthcare Pro was written by Stephen Groner, a medical speech-language pathologist. He uses his knowledge of neural somatosensory and receptive and expressive language networks to treat stroke, dementia, and Traumatic Brain Injury sufferers so they can talk, think, and swallow again.
He helps stroke sufferers tell their wives they love them, dementia patients remember who their children are, or people who struggle to eat swallow easily again so they can share a meal with their grandchildren.
If that doesn’t require and teach good bedside manner, we’re not sure what does.
“First, I want you to know how incredible I think you are. You’re a human who’s trying to help other humans be okay. That’s big and rare and beautiful these days. I also want you to know it’s okay not to know everything. You’re a human, just like your patients.”– Stephen Groner
In his 50-page beautifully designed e-book, Stephen walks through 25 useful interaction strategies to make you the clinician everybody loves. It has all the tools that he uses himself to get through all the doubt and uncertainty that comes along with being a clinician.
They’re insanely practical suggestions that you can start using tomorrow and each one is accompanied by an anecdote and a scientific stat or two.
Until you get your eyes on it for yourself, here’s an excerpt we can all relate to:
“I think health care can be pretty hard most days. Take just last week: a patient asked me point blank if I thought she’d ever go home and live on her own again. My breath caught in my chest and my mind went totally blank. She’d fallen, broken both her hips, and had started leaving the stove on. My heartbeat thump-ing, looking into her imploring eyes, the only thing I could think to say was, “Well…what do you think?”
Bedside Manners for the Healthcare Pro only costs $7.94 – unless you were the lucky winner of our Modern Nurse Giveaway!
Check out our interview with Stephen and follow him on social @heardtohealed – in addition to his wonderful insight and knowledge, he has some amazingly clean and catching photos!
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