Back to Objectives for Rural Programs and Curricula
Relationships with patients is the heart of family medicine. This area above all others can provide the motivation to serve for a lifetime. It also helps build practices and financial stability. Continual attempts to understand people and their situations can be of great benefit to the physician. He or she can extract maximal info for minimal time, knowing what is wrong, what to do, what is expected, what will work and what to say and identifying conflicts between the above (such as expectations vs what will work)
Know patient, know people like the patient, learn when to assume and when not to assume similarities and differences
Confrontation with difficult patients, close friends, family situations
Learn the course of disease, when you must intervene and when you can wait and see
Patient finances, family situations
Stress of workups less through greater familiarity and intimacy
Less risk of liability!
With each passing year it becomes more important to master this area as the trend in medicine is increasingly to avoid direct patient contact and with this, to have learning retarded in this crucial area.
| Technician, Friend, Detective, and Healer: Family Physicians’ Responses to Emotional Distress | 864 |
This study examined 4 ways physicians handle patients’
emotional distress.