The Patient, the Physician, or the Relationship: Who or What Is “Difficult”, Exactly? an Approach for Managing Conflicts between Patients and Physicians

Issam Tanoubi, Llian Cruz-Panesso and Pierre Drolet
Additional contact information
Issam Tanoubi: Medical Simulation Centre, Centre d’Apprentissage des Attitudes et Habiletés Cliniques (CAAHC), Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC H2J 3T5, Canada
Llian Cruz-Panesso: Medical Simulation Centre, Centre d’Apprentissage des Attitudes et Habiletés Cliniques (CAAHC), Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC H2J 3T5, Canada
Pierre Drolet: Medical Simulation Centre, Centre d’Apprentissage des Attitudes et Habiletés Cliniques (CAAHC), Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC H2J 3T5, Canada

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 23, 1-7

Abstract: It is the patient who consults, often at the last minute, the one you sigh over when you see his or her name on your list, the one who makes you feel powerless, and whom you would like to refer to a colleague. Every practicing physician has experienced being involved in a dialog of the deaf, with a patient refusing physicians’ recommendations, in a therapeutic dead end. Faced with such patients, the physician tries to convey scientific evidence to untangle the situation. When it does not work, he looks for other arguments, raises his voice, and avoids looking the patient in the eyes. When he is out of resources, trying to sound professional, he uses a sentence such as “I understand and respect your beliefs, but I am telling you what I learned in medical school!”. At the same time, his non-verbal behavior betrays more than a hint of irritation. Far from being caricatures, such situations generally result in the physician diagnosing or labeling the patient as “difficult.” This label is affixed on more than one patient in ten, and for all sorts of reasons. How, then, do you re-establish a relationship of trust? Or, even better, how do you avoid such labeling?

Keywords: communication; difficult patient; managing conflicts (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/23/12517/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/23/12517/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:23:p:12517-:d:689805

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().