"Your name." ─ may remind you of a Japanese animated film released many years ago; and for me, it reminds me of the story of a British doctor.
Everything starts with "your name"...
By Dr. Chung Kin-lai, Director of Quality and Safety, Hospital Authority
"Your cancer has spread and surgery is impossible." The doctor pushed the door in, without glancing at the patient, and dropped the sentence coldly.
Before the patient could respond, the doctor left in a hurry.
The patient was left alone in the ward to grapple with fear and grief.
Sounds pathetic, doesn't it?
Unfortunately, the above is the real experience of a late British doctor, Dr Kate Granger.
She was diagnosed with a rare cancer at the age of 29.
She lamented, "The doctor not only didn't tell me his name, but also didn't ask me if I needed relatives to accompany me to meet the bad news." She said that throughout the long treatment process, no medical staff had ever introduced herself.
Sometimes, the unintentional speech and behavior of medical staff will tear the dignity of the patient to shreds.
"In their eyes, I'm just a sick body, not a real person with a soul."
Dr Granger's husband encouraged her to do something for the patient instead of complaining.
As a result, Dr Granger launched the "Hello my name is..." campaign on social media, aiming to encourage colleagues to introduce themselves in the simplest way as the first step in improving doctor-patient communication and building mutual trust; giving patients dignity And respect, let humanity return to therapy.
Dr Granger finally passed away in 2016.
The "Hello my name is..." campaign launched by her has received support from at least 400,000 medical staff and 90 NHS medical institutions, and has far-reaching influence.
From August last year to January this year, the HA interviewed more than 13,000 patients at its 26 specialist outpatient clinics to collect patients' experiences, feelings and opinions on outpatient services in specialist outpatient clinics, so as to understand the different characteristics of patients in public hospitals. It is expected that the survey results will be officially announced by the end of this year.
This story made me reflect - what can Hong Kong's public healthcare do?
Hong Kong public hospitals have always been "fast, ruthless and accurate" in diagnosis.
There are many patients waiting for consultation in various departments. Doctors often have to race against the clock to respond to consultations. Therefore, they are often overwhelmed with busy schedules, and even work overtime.
With the busy work of medical care, it is inevitable that sometimes the self-introduction may be omitted.
But from time to time, I hear similar descriptions of medical staff from friends around me, "Although the doctor speaks like a robot, he is actually very attentive and follows up very well..." "Although the girl sometimes speaks rudely, she gets along with her. It was so heartwarming..."
The doctor-patient relationship has always been an important issue.
As the saying goes, a good doctor-patient relationship is already therapeutic in itself.
When a patient comes to the hospital, he can only pin his hopes of curing the disease on the doctor; on the other hand, as a doctor, he has a professional responsibility to the patient, which is to do his best to cure the patient.
Therefore, the doctor-patient relationship must be based on friendship and mutual trust, and fighting against the disease can be multiplied with half the effort.
Dr Granger's story reminds us that something as simple as "Hello! I'm..." can bring us closer together.
Or even, the next time a patient sees a doctor, you might as well ask the doctor "what's your name?".
The doctor-patient relationship is "one step at a time", and I believe that it will definitely bring benefits to the doctor-patient relationship in the long run.
From a micro perspective, a simple self-introduction of medical staff; and from a macro perspective, the HA attaches great importance to the overall medical treatment experience of patients.
In 2010, we launched our first inpatient experience survey.
In order to continuously monitor the service level, HA has been conducting regular surveys on different themes, including inpatient hospitalization, specialist outpatient services and emergency and emergency department services.
Taking 2019 as an example, the survey interviewed nearly 10,000 patients who had been admitted to public hospitals.
The survey results showed that over 90% of the interviewed patients rated the overall experience of public hospital inpatient services at 7 points or above (out of 10 points).
Positive comments from interviewed patients included "confidence in medical staff" and "considering patient privacy".
However, there is still room for improvement in some areas, such as "self-introduction by medical staff", "information provided at discharge", etc.
Affected by the epidemic, the patient experience survey in 2020 was suspended for one year. From August last year to January this year, we interviewed more than 13,000 patients who had been in specialist outpatient clinics to learn about the patients’ experiences, feelings, and feedback on outpatient treatment. service opinion.
I boldly estimate that this latest survey report may more or less reflect some of the "dissatisfaction" of some patients seeking medical treatment in specialist outpatient clinics during the epidemic, such as failure to follow-up consultations as scheduled.
It is true that in the past two or three years, not only the specialist outpatient services of public hospitals, but also other non-emergency services and family visits have been affected to varying degrees by the COVID-19 pandemic.
While we hope to gain the understanding of the patients, of course, we also attach great importance to the opinions of the patients on the hospital services.
The investigation agency is still analyzing the data and is expected to officially announce the results by the end of this year.
I have always believed that quality improvement is an important part of corporate governance.
Medical staff must fully understand the needs of patients in order to continuously improve service quality. The opinions of patients also help the HA to plan the direction of future service development and formulate improvement measures.
We will definitely read the report humbly and carefully, and use it as an important reference for improving the doctor-patient relationship and the level of public medical services.
"Hong Kong 01" "01 Clinic", in cooperation with the Hospital Authority, publishes a column "Garden Tour" written by medical staff every Wednesday.
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