Learning Even When One Doesn’t Want to

Preparing for a banquet speech I will give on 9 October 2016 at the Annual meeting of the Society of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis prompted me to review our training experience in advanced communication skill and hypnoidal language for healthcare professionals (Comfort Talk®). Research data clearly showed improved patient outcomes and higher patient satisfaction after training repeatedly. One might thus assume that all medical staff would want to be in on that. But that is not necessarily the case.

As so often I learned the hard way. Years ago I became director of an Interventional Radiology Division in distress. The turf battles that had driven my predecessors to flee just felt like a challenge I was ready for. I inherited a team with considerable mistrust in any leadership because of unfortunate past events. I thought that I could bring some healing through a Comfort Talk-type training; that it would help the team members to better communicate their grievances and provide better support for their patients through procedures. I invited skilled outside trainers for the endeavor. The result was a choir of dissent. Many determined that they didn’t want to do this. I said fine, we will only the ones who want to be take the training. A few did.

Afterwards, trained staff started to get nicer notes and more cookies from patients (edible gifts were still allowed in those days). Two of the trained staff were promoted to hospital-wide positions. Also doctors started to prefer trained staff for their cases since the patients were calmer. A year later, some of the untrained staff complained bitterly about not having been trained, so I announced another training. Again, loud objections followed. This time I made the training obligatory for all but offered that nobody would need to use the new skills they would learn if they didn’t want to.

Unbeknownst to us, a hospital wide quality assurance committee had started to collect pain scores randomly from patients in our area. Patients treated by the first volunteer group had significantly lower pain scores after the training on a 0=no pain and 5=worst pain possible scale. Before training scores were 2.53 and afterwards 1.55, much closer to what patients considered as acceptable (1.52). Surprisingly the group that fought the training also had dramatic improvements in their patients’ pain scores (from a baseline of 2.54 to 1.41). Thus even for those who were convinced they knew it all, a few more tricks in the bag made the difference. Once one actually tests the Comfort Talk skills in real patient encounters and notices how much easier and effective it is, there is no going back. The new skills become second nature. And it is nice to get cards from happy patients.

References

  1. Lang EV, Berbaum KS. Educating interventional radiology personnel in nonpharmacologic analgesia: effect on patients’ pain perception. Acad Radiol, 1997; 4: 753-757

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