How would you react if you were in the middle of an encounter and the SP gets a text…
And instead of keeping focus on your encounter, pulls our their phone and starts texting.
This isn’t something we hear about often… But in this day and age where everybody is on their phones almost all the time, it makes sense that we discuss how to tackle a situation such as this.
As with all of the challenging scenarios, often times the best way to tackle it is to keep things simple…
What I always teach students to do in a case like this is to use a 3-step process for addressing the challenge, re-directing the patient’s attention, and thanking them for co-operating.
Here’s what it would look like in action:
Step 1) You notice the patient is texting, now you want to address this: “Ms. Sara, I understand that you’re probably eager to get out of here and talk with your friends”… this addressed what the patient was likely doing.
Step 2) Next you want to re-direct the patient’s attention: “If you’ll give me just a few more minutes of your attention, I’ll get you out of here so you can get back to your friends, does that sound ok with you?”… this re-directs the patient’s attention by getting them to refocus on the interview..
Step 3) Next you want to thank them for cooperating: “Thank you Ms. Sara, I’ll be done in a few minutes”… this simply thanks the patient for giving you their attention.
And that’s all their really is to it… So remember the 3-step process we used here today: 1. Address the challenge, 2. Re-direct the patient’s attention, and 3. Thank them for co-operating…
Use this anytime a challenge such as this comes up and you’ll be well on your way to getting full points in your ability to handle challenging scenarios.
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