The healing touch in patient education
Does your doctor touch you? a friend of mine recently asked.
Her own physician had repeatedly refused to inspect her ailing knee, preferring instead to send her to specialists, and now she was looking for a family doctor with a little more empathy and a softer touch.
It's a common complaint in today's fast-paced healthcare world. The in-office treatment that many patients receive, as well as the educational materials they are given about their condition and their medicine, is often too clinical and too impersonal to meet their true needs. Whats missing is the human element, a crucial part of the healing process.
When a doctor physically touches a patient, it brings the encounter alive. The feel of another persons hand transmits a kind of life force, which the Chinese call chi and the Japanese call ki. In the Bible, the laying on of hands is frequently mentioned as a treatment for many kinds of illness.
We cannot duplicate this experience in written communications, but we can touch patients with our words in ways that are profound and meaningful. The right word, applied at just the right spot, can help break down resistance, provide reassurance and hope, and lead to positive changes and better health. If we believe that words have the power to destroy, then we must also believe that words can heal.
Rafael Campo, M.D., director of the Harvard Program in the Medical Humanities and an award-winning poet, says language is a primary modality for healing, because its really an opportunity for empathetic connection between people. He finds himself compelled by the descriptions that patients give him about the pain in their chest, or the pounding in their head that is like the jackhammer outside. Much of his practice is based on listening to patients tell their stories, without interruption, so that he can discover the truth of their experience.
As health educators, we can do no less. We must know our audience intimately, and find ways to inspire them rather than just inform them. This involves using the metaphors that patients use to describe their own suffering, and employing the kind of universal language that will resonate with every patient, regardless of age, background, or ethnicity. We all feel pain in the same way, and experience loss in the same way, says Campo.
Speaking the language of patientsand speaking to them in ways that echo and address their personal sufferingis the equivalent of a kind touch on the arm or a pat on the shoulder. It lifts our message out of the ordinary and into the transformational. This is where true communication and true healing begin.