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- Humans in Healthcare: Chapter #10
Hi there!
I hope you’ve had a great week since we met in your inbox last Sunday.
I’ve had a full one — celebrating my son’s 6th birthday yesterday by taking his friends to the movie theatre to watch the new Ninja Turtles movie. My 90’s kid heart always feels satisfied when I create new experiences that bridge the past to the present, with my son. Something about green ooze never gets old!
How are you doing?
One quick update:
I’ve decided to publish some “off book chapters” to continue to share what’s on my heart and in my story, outside of this weekly publication.
Words can be a window into our soul — and like the experience with my son noted above, I want my children to know that I did something with the words in my soul.
So I’m writing them down.
In an effort to not clutter your inbox, these will only be published to the web version of this newsletter. Feel free to check out the first one. I enabled commenting if you feel inclined to engage with the content.
Thank you 🤍
Today, I’m sharing the first chapter in the 🗄️Resources for Humans (in healthcare) series.
While this series is being defined in real time, the intention is to share something practical, tactical, or actionable to use in your healthcare experience. Stay tuned for future chapters in this series, including:
a framework from a pharmacist on challenging the inner critic and imposter in all of us
tips from a physical therapist turned healthcare recruiter for how to set yourself up for success when looking for non traditional roles as a clinician
a reverse engineering experiment in the healthcare hiring process
and much, much more!
👀 Do you have a resource for humans (in healthcare) that you want eyes on? Let me know by completing this form. I’d love to support your mission.
📖 And now for the feature chapter
In light of the last chapter theme of giving and receiving difficult news, I am breaking down a helpful resource on how to do that, sparked by a conversation with my friend, Dr. Michael O’Brien (please check out his newsletter, Clinician Creative!)
This is the evidence based SPIKES Protocol: A six-step stepwise framework for delivering bad news to patients.
While I hope you read it in entirety, incase you are short on time and need a TL;DR…
❗️ Be sure to check out the end for two downloadable resources that will help support any difficult conversation you may find yourself in AND an opt in for a pilot initiative for healthcare professionals.
History of the SPIKES Protocol
The SPIKES protocol was developed and officially published in early 2000 by three oncologists: Dr. Robert Buckman of Toronto-Sunnybrook Regional Cancer Centre, Dr. Michael Levy of the Fox Chase Cancer Center, and Dr. Watler Baile of the MD Anderson Cancer Center. It was born out of a rising need to up skill clinicians in how to discuss bad news with patients.
Prior to this, data from surveyed physicians showed that many considered it a disservice to disclose bad news about a diagnosis to the patient. At that time, less robust diagnostics and treatment options were available, so less discussion regarding treatment planning was required.
With the rise of treatment advances, came the rise of more hope — and more complexity in the course of care. Subsequently, physicians were finding the challenges of sharing a wide array of information with patients about their course, including discussions like possibilities of cancer recurrence, spread of disease, failure of treatment, increasing side effects of medication, and discussion of end of life care.
Leading up to the publication of the protocol, the authors surveyed 700 oncologists in an attempt to understand the reasons why it is difficult to break bad news to patients. Participants cited the following reasons:
How to be honest with the patient and not destroy hope (55%)
Dealing with patient’s emotions (25%)
Finding the right amount of time (10%)
Less than 10% said they had formal training in breaking bad news.
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