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Category: October 2019

Communicating effectively with patients is key to a successful practice. For October, we asked our members to detail a tough conversation they’ve had with a patient. We asked them how they have navigated the discussion and they’ve shared with us what those difficult discussions gained them.

Helping Those Who Help Themselves

By Shaher T. El-Hadidy, MD Dealing with human beings can sometimes be a challenging endeavor. The doctor-patient relationship is a fragile entity that is ideally based on mutual respect and trust. I still remember a challenging case I faced in one of my out patients where a women in her early forties presented with an […]

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Tough Conversations

By Chetan Patel, FC Plast Surg SA Of the tougher conversations I have had with patients, it would seem that the difficulty was largely due more to self-doubt than to any inherent patient factor.  One such case comes to mind: a 30-something right hand dominant hardware store manager came off in a motorbike accident sustaining […]

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Hindsight

By Jason Pruzansky, MD A 77-year-old right hand dominant woman presented to my office with a complaint of left forearm pain.  The discomfort began after she was transitioning from a rolling walker to a sofa and used her left hand for support.  Radiographs demonstrated a displaced radial shaft fracture, suspicious for a pathologic lesion, which […]

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Honesty Is Always the Best Policy

By Peter R. Thomas, MD, MSc Honesty is always the best policy. When I think of difficult conversations I have had with patients, this sentence is always foremost in my mind.  I believe one of the most difficult conversations that can be had with a patient occurs in the immediate postoperative period at the first follow-up […]

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