Saturday, July 22, 2023

Need more compassion in Health Care: Dr Joseph Stern on Your Intended Message

Technical competency is not the same as compassion. Yet both are critical in healthcare https://youtu.be/9B8Nu_9JwCg Dr. Joseph Stern is a neurosurgeon who discovered that compassion was missing from healthcare, when his younger sister, Victoria, developed leukemia, had a bone marrow transplant and died. He is the author of "Grief Connects Us: A Neurosurgeon's Lessons on Love, Loss and Compassion. https://www.amazon.ca/Grief-Connects-Us-Neurogsurgeons-Compassion-ebook/dp/B08DM7DXCY/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1FOD1YSB5YZPJ&keywords=grief+connects+us&qid=1648135253&sprefix=grief%2520connects%2520us%2Caps%2C71&sr=8-1 ===== In this conversation with Dr. Joseph Stern, we explore: The importance of emotional agility There's a time for compassion and a time for technical expertise Understanding the patient's anxiety and terror Developing shared vulnerability to communicate in an empathetic way How routine can get in the way of connecting with people Shifting from empathy to technical precision Why it's critical for health care professionals to manager their own emotional care Recognizing and removing the emotional armor ------ Highlights from this conversation with Dr Joseph (Jody) Stern 00:00 Introduction 02:29 Technical expertise vs compassion in health care 04:14 It's routine for the doctors and scary for the patient 04:49 Emotional agility 06:06 How can health care professionals manage their emotions? 08:08 Shed your emotional armor 09:52 Resource for emotional agility 14:04 Where is the compassion when you need it? 16:08 The language of compassion 17:39 What do you wish you did differently? 21:27 We all will die 22:51 Grief Connects Us - the book 24:57 Advice to health care professionals 26:39 Ask your doctor questions 30:11 How can leaders be more compassionate ----- Listen to this interview with Dr Joseph Stern on Your intended Message podcast https://yourintendedmessage.podbean.com/e/the-language-of-love-loss-and-compassion-dr-joseph-stern/ ----- Excerpts from this conversation with Dr Joseph Stern on Your Intended Message podcast with host, George Torok: So first of all, I think the vulnerability part is is really important, you have to allow yourself to be vulnerable. And you have to end I think that leaders often feel that that's a sign of weakness, and I actually think it's a sign of strength. So, shared vulnerability or willingness to be vulnerable. I think also, in healthcare, one of the things that I think is a problem is that healthcare organizations advocate for compassion in their workforce, you know, I, your job as nurse or doctor is to be compassionate toward the patient, but they don't advocate for that same level of compassion for the workers. And where you have selective compassion or transactional compassion, it's not really, truly compassionate. So if I'm, you know, I have to I had a nurse tell me that he, he was taking care of dying patients, dying patient and their family, and he really loved that that was super important. And then immediately upon the death of the patient, they said, Well, you have another assignment. So no, no chance, no chance to grieve or process what they've gone through, you know, on to more productivity. And so I think that being honest, allowing people to develop that compassion, those compassionate behaviours is important. And maintaining being true to your spouse, or your espoused values, the same as your enacted values. Are you really doing what you're saying, you know, when when, when marketing takes over and says, Well, we're going to show how compassionate we are, because then we want to get more throughput, and we want to capture more patients. But meanwhile, the providers are struggling with the volume and demands placed on them. That's not compassionate. So you can say it's compassionate. But is it really, I think that if people if leaders were really to say, Is this something I would be okay with what I would I, would I thrive in this situation, or how can I change the situation so that I would do well and other people will, will achieve their their greatest results, I think those things would be would be super important. The other thing I would say is also, if you work toward this survey, you're going to get to a certain level of performance. But if you work toward these core values, and really allow them to permeate your organization, you'll achieve a level of success that you almost wouldn't believe would be possible. ----- https://yourintendedmessage.podbean.com/e/the-language-of-love-loss-and-compassion-dr-joseph-stern/ https://yourintendedmessage.podbean.com/ https://yourintendedmessage.com/