65. Bouncing Back After a Tough Case

11/15/21 • 38 min

Stimulus - Learn Tools to Crush It in Your Medical Career

The nature of medical practice dictates that we will have tough cases. Patients will die, we will have to deliver bad news, and we will, at some point, make mistakes. We have high expectations of ourselves so when we get figuratively knocked down, how do we get back up? In this episode, performance coach Jason Brooks guides us through strategies for dealing with the emotional and intellectual fallout of a bad case as well as how to re-engage during a shift when the last thing we feel like doing is seeing the next patient.

Guest bio: Jason Brooks Ph.D. is a performance coach helping healthcare providers, athletes, and other high-level performers live better, work better, and be better. Check him out at Phenomenal Docs and connect with Jason: Facebook, Twitter, email [email protected]

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We discuss:

The fact that no matter how good you are in your medical practice, you are not immune to a bad outcome [02:20];
How to manage the sense of failure and the anxiety that naturally occurs when you’re faced with the same situation again [04:00];The importance of getting prepared ahead of time and expecting bad things to happen [06:00]
Channeling the experience into something positive [08:25];
Learning to live with and honor these experiences, rather than dread them [10:00];
Drawing a lesson from a bad event and committing to apply that lesson [16:30];
The value of talking to someone who is able to receive your emotional turmoil in the immediate aftermath of a bad outcome [18:40];
Why we shouldn’t think of it as “bouncing back” from a terrible outcome [23:00];
What do you do when you’ve had a bad outcome, but you don’t have the time to process what’s happened before your next shift [29:00];
The importance of having a process that you can trust to be effective in helping you shift your attention back to where it needs to be [32:25];
And more.

Awake + Aware | Our 2025 Live Event

🖱️ Website: Awakeandawarebend.com

🎓 P.S. Yes, this is a CME event!

The Flameproof Course

The hidden anti-burnout curriculum we all should have learned in training. Cohort 3 begins Sept 10, 2024. Get the deets

For full show notes of this episode and all sorts of other goodies, visit our podcast website

We discuss:

The fact that no matter how good you are in your medical practice, you are not immune to a bad outcome [02:20];
How to manage the sense of failure and the anxiety that naturally occurs when you’re faced with the same situation again [04:00];The importance of getting prepared ahead of time and expecting bad things to happen [06:00]
Channeling the experience into something positive [08:25];
Learning to live with and honor these experiences, rather than dread them [10:00];
Drawing a lesson from a bad event and committing to apply that lesson [16:30];
The value of talking to someone who is able to receive your emotional turmoil in the immediate aftermath of a bad outcome [18:40];
Why we shouldn’t think of it as “bouncing back” from a terrible outcome [23:00];
What do you do when you’ve had a bad outcome, but you don’t have the time to process what’s happened before your next shift [29:00];
The importance of having a process that you can trust to be effective in helping you shift your attention back to where it needs to be [32:25];
And more.

Previous Episode

64. Why Focusing on Patient Experience and Not Satisfaction Is the Right Move

Patient satisfaction and the patient experience are vastly different different things. In this pod we discuss: how experience is influenced by every conceivable touchpoint, and perception, how making a purposeful choice to care helps ensure that our patients have a positive experience, efficiently handling the situation when a patient has extra questions, the best way to acknowledge a patient’s long wait, and de-escalating the unhappy patient.

Guest Bio: Justin Bright MD, CPXP is an attending physician and the Assistant Medical Director for Patient Experience in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. He is fascinated by the intersection of patient experience, interpersonal communication, customer service, and employee engagement. Check out his ideas at www.ptexpmd.com or on The Patient Experience podcast on Spotify, Apple Music, or any other listening platform you enjoy.

Awake + Aware | Our 2025 Live Event

🖱️ Website: Awakeandawarebend.com

🎓 P.S. Yes, this is a CME event!

The Flameproof Course

The hidden anti-burnout curriculum we all should have learned in training. Cohort 3 begins Sept 10, 2024. Get the deets

For full show notes of this episode and all sorts of other goodies, visit our podcast website

We discuss:

A patient satisfaction survey rant [02:45];
The “patient experience” and how it is influenced by every conceivable touchpoint, perception, and logistical thing that may happen to a patient [11:10];
How making a purposeful choice to care helps ensure that our patients have a positive experience [16:15];
The power of the pause [19:35];
Avoiding the “doorknob complaint” by asking open-ended rather than direct questions [22:00];
Efficiently handling the situation when a patient has extra questions after you thought you had already completed the encounter [24:50];
The best way to acknowledge a patient’s long wait [26:40];
How to respond to the disgruntled patient who voices complaints about other people involved in their care or their prolonged wait [29:30];
Deescalating the unhappy patient whose expectations of care were not met [33:10];
Salvaging the situation when a patient threatens to call the nurse administrator or an attorney [39:10];
And more.

For complete shownotes: https://roborman.com/stimulus/63-the-patient-experience-with-justin-bright/

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Next Episode

66. Hell Yeah or No

How do you decide whether to say yes or no to something? In this 5 minute episode, we break down a simple yet incredibly effective heuristic taken from the book Hell Yeah or No by Derek Sivers.

Awake + Aware | Our 2025 Live Event

🖱️ Website: Awakeandawarebend.com

🎓 P.S. Yes, this is a CME event!