HI Everyone !!
Just getting the conversation started for Workshop 3…we talked about providing the patient with Validation, Hope and Understanding early in the process of evaluation and how this is the first step and a critical step in recovery. In fact, if we skip this, we will likely have a resistant patient who feels judged, misunderstood or that we are on the fringe of medicine and don’t know what we are talking about.
I made this mistake just last week !!……a man came to me with decades of whole body pain….all the doctors, tests, treatments, etc. that one has. His ultimate diagnosis was chronic back pain from failed back syndrome and fibromyalgia. I thought he knew what I did and had come to see me to try a new path. In the first hour, I jumped in with this new approach to chronic pain and maybe it could help him – thinking he would be so relieved and excited. However, I had skipped the validation piece. I had read all of his medical records prior to his appointment, but from his perspective, I didn’t listen to his stories. He said I had not listened to him, that I had judged him, that I didn’t know the details of his pain and his experiences and how this had destroyed his life. I went too fast and didn’t listen enough. I had miscalculated how quickly I could go from Validation and Hope to Understanding…I felt really bad. He left my care, so I didn’t get a redo on that one. In hindsight, I should have seen how much pain he was in and been more sensitive to where he was in the first visit – I should have put more testers out there to explore how ready he was to hear the good news and developed the relationship more before diving into it.