One thing that stood out to me is people's expectations. You go into something expecting one thing and if you don't get what you expected, immediately you are off to a bad start.
The girl in the worst ultrasound video expected to be able to take a video camera in because of what she has heard. When she found out that she was not allowed it seemed to start a chain reaction of mental negativity. Her focus then turned to how silly of a rule that is, to this sucks my husband is not hear, to she doesn't speak, to my baby is dead thoughts. A cannonball of emotions triggered by one event, which made the rest worse than it probably was (minus the sonographer not knowing how to take internal pictures, that is bad).
The girl in the best ultrasound video, she was warned a head of time about the ultrasound. She didn't have a good start to the day, but she expected that. She knew that to drink one liter of water was going to be uncomfortable. After that painful experience of an uncomfortable bladder was over, she really didn't have much to say other than it was a good experience. She saw her baby girl. The girl in the best ultrasound didn't seem to have a whole lot of other expectations other than potentially the thought of cold gel.
I feel as though to be able to deal with patients who come in with their own expecations of how the scan should be preformed, speaking very clearly right away on how you are going to perform the ultrasound will save the patient hopefully a lot of disapointment/frustration, as well as the ultrasound tech.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I agree with you, communicating to the patient how the ultrasound will be performed would clear up negative feelings about any expectations the patient had. The lady with the negative ultrasound really had a lot of opinions and expectations.
ReplyDeleteIt goes to show how key communication is with the patient. The only thought is even though we can communicate those things there is still no changing their opinions. They may predetermine the ultrasound to be a bad experience if they are told before hand that they are not allowed to have video cameras or a loved one in the room.
ReplyDelete