vetpad

I was supposed to be at a workshop in Leicester yesterday – the first meeting of a project that we are involved with (IMPALA) set up to explore educational uses of podcasting. However I spent 6 hours in the casualty department of our local hospital instead - my wife was rushed there by me with a suspected appendicitis. Anyway, she is now fine and that’s the main thing.

Reflecting on the event, reminds me of the patient experiences website that we recommended to medical students where I was working previously – and how story telling can be a powerful learning experience for students. The medical student who saw us first in casualty was clearly not aware that extreme pain requires acknowledgement and a rapid response and that lengthy interviews about your past medical history did not work well in this situation. The fact that history taking skills would have been just as effectively practiced after the morphine injection was missed somehow. This student could actually have helped to keep us informed of what was going on and built up a better relationship with us and probably learnt a lot more….

For me the most important skill demonstrated by any member of staff (one of the nurses) during that stressful time was COMMUNICATION with a little EMPATHY - the simple phrase “you are obviously in a lot of pain – we are going to give you something to ease the pain now” made a big difference to how we felt.