Bedside Manners: Mandatory Skills for Medical Staff

Working in the medical field is such a great experience and a great career to pursue in the future. My pathway is Health Science and I want to become an RN. In other words, a Registered Nurse. A Registered Nurse requires many skills. A lot of existing physicians already have those skills, but others may not. Although, there is one problem our industry faces, and that's called 'Bedside Manners'. Bedside Manners are to have professional manners in either the hospital or clinics. One way we can solve the problem is by creating a class to talk about 'Bedside Manners' and how we can improve on it. To solve 'Bedside Manners', we should create a class to improve on our skills to please our patients.

You are most likely wondering what exactly “Bedside Manners” means. The problem refers to having good communication and great interactions with the patients. Many physicians don’t seem to follow those bedside manners that are in need in the industry. So many issues that we've noticed are the most common ones out there. Bad examples are walking in the patient's room without greeting, interacting, or helping. You must make the patient feel comfortable and welcomed. The reason why is because all these help the patient trust his/her physician. The patients will then follow every one of the rules that we've given to them. Question is, what exactly brought this problem to my attention. Many physicians get used to what they do at the hospitals/clinics, so they tend to get lazy to do every step. What they don’t know is that the patient won’t be able to know what is going on with the process. For example, I’ve seen a PCT (patient care tech) perform a capillary puncture on a patient. His first step was knocking on the door and going in the room. The next step was greeting the patient by asking how he/she is, feeling, and needs anything as something to drink. This is to make the patient feel welcomed at home and comfortable with asking for anything they need. That is a great example on how Bedside Manners should work in this medical industry. A bad example of “Bedside Manner” makes our pathway look horrifying to the world. The contrary of what I have listed before. The people who get affected by the problem are the physicians, patients, and the family of the patients.

Bedside Manners can help most of the physicians out by improving and gaining such impeccable skills. Most likely they can gain emotional stability, have great compassion, have good problem-solving skills, etc. I believe this can resolve the problem because they can get a better concept on how things should work and what could happen if they don’t pursue these rules and steps. Not only does this problem affect anyone in the health industry but is can also negatively affect the doctor’s/physicians. A way on how it can affect them is by their skills. Their skills can either increase or decrease positively or negatively. Both ways can happen but if they choose to do the contrary then it can be negatively affected.

The skills that I have learned/acquired in my pathway that pertains to the problem/resolution is to acquire respect towards the patients and their family members to comfort them in anything they need, which is a longer version of “Bedside Manners”. I will utilize those skills by entering the patient’s room the right way and introducing myself, so I can explain the process that I will be working on with them. This can also help us on being more open and more satisfied with helping our patients. To make sure they are feeling good in every way so that we can also feel good about our success in the medical field that we’ve been working on.

By creating a class, we were able to fix having inadequate bedside manners. Our patients can now be satisfied by how we serve them with such impeccable skills.

Work Cited

1. “The Best Way Hospitals Can Engage Physicians, Nurses, and Staff.” Health Catalyst, 11 Sept. 2018, www.healthcatalyst.com/the-best-way-hospitals-engage-physicians-nurses-and-staff.
2. “The Negative Impact of a Doctor's Poor Bedside Manner.” Psych Central, Psych Central.com, 8 July 2018, psychcentral.com/blog/the-negative-impact-of-a-doctors-poor-bedside-manner/.
3. “Patient Care and Procedural Skills: ACGME Core Competencies.” NEJM Knowledge+, 18 Nov. 2016, knowledgeplus.nejm.org/blog/patient-care-procedural-skills/.
4. Persson, Ricky. “10 Traits Every Physician Assistant Needs.” Gap Medics US, Gap Medics US, 2 Mar. 2016, www.gapmedics.com/blog/2014/09/11/10-traits-every-physician-assistant-needs/.
5. Skyvell Nilsson, Maria, et al. “Professional Culture, Information Security and Healthcare Quality--an Interview Study of Physicians' and Nurses' Perspectives on Value Conflicts in the Use of Electronic Medical Records.” Safety in Health, vol. 4, no. 1, 7 Nov. 2018. Academic OneFile, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A567963462/AONE?u=j057910010&sid=AONE&xid=9afbcf01. Accessed 14 Jan. 2019.