الجمعة، 19 مارس 2021

I teach how to share news in medical school. My own unexpected pregnancy made it personal

As it turned out that the pregnancy was ectopic, my doctor’s tone shifted from joyful to empathetic

Some years ago I taught a class in medical school on “Breaking Bad News”. I never liked the title, but I inherited it and was not allowed to change it. So I used it to deconstruct what we meant by “breaking” and “bad”. We know that assumptions by a clinician on whether it is “good” or “bad” news impacts how it’s delivered to a patient. In turn, that delivery, along with the news itself and the patient’s own view on its value, influence a patient’s response.

To encourage students to consider the complexity around giving news a value, I used invented examples. These were: a) telling someone they had a particular diagnosis, which on the face of it appears to be bad news, but gives a name and the attendant social validity to a patient’s symptoms; and b) telling someone they were pregnant, which might seem like good news when that might not be the case.

Related: I'm so thankful for my daughter but I wish someone had prepared me for the physical toll of childbirth | Elicia O'Reilly

Related: As an oncologist I trade in bad news of the worst kind, but giving it is still stressful | Ranjana Srivastava

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from Pregnancy | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3tA1umQ

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