The Art of Healthcare: Recent Episodes
The Art of Healthcare
Exploring the human side of healthcare. Practical conversations with experts to help us connect better, show up better, and understand ourselves and our patients better.
Have you ever felt that you have had to "hide" parts of yourself in your clinical practice?
What did that feel like when you did it?
Jack Holroyde joins me to talk about bringing your whole self to your practice of healthcare.
Jack and I talk about
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The concept of professionalism constraining our ability to help someone
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Communicating effectively instead of clinically
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Appreciating the gravity of our patient's experience in what we might find a mundane interaction
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The identity we are assuming, and whether that serves us
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Recognising that we are full of shit a lot of the time, and how to become more comfortable with that.
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Challenging long held biases
Connect with Jack on Twitter https://twitter.com/jack_holroyde
How well do you understand the values your patient holds? What do they care about besides just getting their problem fixed? We can “fix” their problem AND not actually improve their lives or their health. BUT if we understand what matters to them then we are better able to fix their problem in a way...
The post How to do Values based healthcare appeared first on The Art of Healthcare.
We need to develop personally at least as much as we need to develop professionally if we want to deliver great healthcare. I’m joined by Grant Downie OBE, medical and performance specialist consultant. He is also a physiotherapist and mentor for people wanting to improve their leadership and communication skills. Today we talk through Every...
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How have your beliefs about the healthcare you deliver evolved over the time you’ve been practicing? What’s shaped that evolution? How do you try to consciously evolve your beliefs? Do you spend too much attention on the doing side of health that you miss the being side of health? Mark Stolow, CJO of Huddol had...
The post Expanding our healthcare beliefs appeared first on The Art of Healthcare.
Training for person perception and communication needs the same rigor and status as “hard skills training” This episode’s guest is Danielle Blanch Hartigan, PhD, MPH who is social scientist with interdisciplinary research and teaching interests in psychology and public health. Her research, broadly defined, aims to understand how psychological constructs influence the powerful relationship between...
The post Empathy is a trainable skill appeared first on The Art of Healthcare.
The concept of person-centred care is a complex one. To deliver true person-centred care there are a lot of components to be aware of and no definitive “How-to” manual. As healthcare providers we’re trained to solve problems. When it comes to person-centred care we typically focus on the wrong problems. We’re good at finding and...
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Delivering healthcare happens in a fast paced, often high stress and high stakes environment. The pressure is on us as providers to perform day in and day out to deliver high performance healthcare. Just like athletic performance doesn’t just come
The post Sleep, Treat, Perform, Repeat – Performance Healthcare appeared first on The Art of Healthcare.
Delivering healthcare happens in a fast paced, often high stress and high stakes environment. The pressure is on us as providers to perform day in and day out to deliver high performance healthcare. Just like athletic performance doesn’t just come down to how well the person catches, throws, or passes. Healthcare performance isn’t just the...
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How do people make sense of their health? And how does that inform their health behaviours? Two questions that this week’s guest Ben Darlow has been pondering for quite some time. How do we as health professionals help people make sense of their health, all the health information that is out there, and hopefully nudge...
The post Making sense of the rules of health appeared first on The Art of Healthcare.
Who teaches us how to care? As health professionals we learn the “health” side of healthcare from textbooks, and lectures, and reviewed practice. BUT has anyone ever taught you the Care side? Or has it just been assumed that you have it, or worse, not considered at all? I’m joined by Ben Lynch of Clinic...
The post Putting the CARE in Healthcare appeared first on The Art of Healthcare.
Nocebo beliefs are those beliefs that a person holds around a particular treatment, diagnosis, or health challenge that lead them towards a negative outcome. There are a variety of reasons these beliefs exist. AND part of our role as health providers is to challenge these without destroying the therapeutic relationship we have with this person,...
The post How to challenge a Nocebo belief without destroying your therapeutic relationship appeared first on The Art of Healthcare.
Modern Slavery might not be a term many of us are familiar with BUT we need to be able to recognise it and take action as appropriate. I’m joined by Sarah Morse to understand what Modern Slavery is, and how we as healthcare providers might come across it. And it’s not just your boss being...
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Can healthcare be high performance?….. Yes Should Healthcare be high performance?…… Most of the time What do you think about when you think about high performance healthcare? If you’re anything like the me who started out their healthcare career the first thing that pops to mind is probably a really high level of clinical skills....
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When we are designing health programs, how often do we incorporate the lived experience of people who we are providing a service to? Less often than we should I’d wager. Both at the individual interaction level and across the wider health system. We’re the experts right? What we think is best, is probably best isn’t...
The post Supported Self-Management appeared first on The Art of Healthcare.
The future of healthcare is person-centered care!
What does that mean? And how do we do it?
It involves having some clinical bravery.
Bravery to understand the philosophy of how we practice and stay true to it.
Bravery relinquish clinical control to others
Bravery to continually reflect on how we could do better
Bravery to consider that we aren't the expert in this situation
Claire Killingback (amazing physio name) joins us to discuss how she is shaping the physios of the future to practice this way, and how we can do it too.
In this chat we talk through;
Setting up university physiotherapy program for physios of the future
The philosophy of person centered care
How person centered care is different from patient centered care
Clinical bravery
The role of systems and environments in shaping care
The continuum of person centered practice
Learning when to stop people
Assessing as a narrative as opposed to a list
The philisophical underpinnings of how you want to practice
Using your philosophy to shape your career path
Reconceptualising physiotherapy identities
Letting go of control
Understanding who the expert is
Physiosplaining
Reflecting on our practice
The post Clinical bravery and person centered care appeared first on The Art of Healthcare.
Empathy is important. The research points to this, and we're told to be more empathetic.
BUT
How do we actually do that?
Dr Laura Rock joins the podcast to have a conversation about empathy in real clinical practice.
We talk through
The power of stories for teaching
The importance of listening to patient stories
Why we should pay attention to the "small" stuff
Reflective writing
Training to look at problems from more than one perspective
Why we shouldn't be afraid of people crying
The reasons emotions are scary for health professionals
The problem with suppressing emotions
Understanding how we add emotional load to patients
The GIVE framework for empathy
The Ask - tell -ask framework for an empathetic response
Expert parenting strategies
How we can perform better as healthcare teams
How we can communicate better as healthcare teams
The post Don’t answer feelings with facts: frameworks for responding with empathy appeared first on The Art of Healthcare.
Empathy is important. The research points to this, and were told to be more empathetic.
BUT
How do we actually do that?
Dr Laura Rock joins the podcast to have a conversation about empathy in real clinical practice.
We talk through
The power of stories f
The post Don’t answer feelings with facts: frameworks for responding with empathy appeared first on The Art of Healthcare.
Most of us been thinking and communicating health information for our entire adult lives. Some of us (including me) since before our brain was fully developed.
We'd like to think that we're doing a good job of conveying information to everyone else who hasn't had the depth of learning we have. I'm sure a lot of the time we do a really good job, BUT can we actually be sure?
Jasmine Marcus is a journalist turned physical therapist who still remembers living life as an adult without knowing this stuff. She couples this with her communication expertise as a journalist and joins me on the podcast this week.
We talk through
Understanding what it's like to be an adult not working in the health industry
The challenges of not having something tangible to show for your work
The value of recording and acknowledging your wins
That it's normal to question our abilities
Glorifying our ego by oversharing what we notice is "abnormal"
Why we should normalize "abnormal" findings
How to shift the direction of dominant narratives
Why you should question what you take for granted
Trying to make yourself more skeptical
How to challenge nocebo effects
The power of celery water
Why you should consume professional education on social media
The post Improving your communication with journalist turned physical therapist Jasmine Marcus appeared first on The Art of Healthcare.
Creativity and preparation may seem to be strange bedfellows. After all one seems fluid while the other is rigid.
Tyson Franklin joins me to discuss why we need both (and how they can fit together) in order to be practicing at the top of our game.
Today we talk through
How everyone has a creative streak
How to cultivate your creativity
The role creativity plays in communication
Why you should seek out new experiences outside your profession
Brain books
Creating a disaster folder
Bringing a buffer zone into your day
Using the concept your future self effectively
Preparing to be your best, in the worst situation
The real reason Tyson has that ear ring
Bobcats fighting rattlesnakes
Everyone has a favourite super hero
The post The importance of creativity and preparation appeared first on The Art of Healthcare.
One reason for so many of our Healthcare advancements is our reductionist thinking about health. Tackling one small aspect at a time and solving it. It’s why we’ve got better at keeping people alive.
One reason that healthcare doesn't adequately address many of the health challenges facing our societies at the moment is reductionist thinking (to not be reductionist here, there are also a lot of others).
Human beings are complex systems, living within complex systems and environments. Our symptoms are (sometimes) caused by a biological response, but the drivers for that biological response are often complex and varied. Reductionist thinking hits the biological response (which is helpful) but not the drivers of the response (which is not).
Alex Murray joins me for a conversation on Complex systems theory, non specific effects, practical stuff we can do with our patients in the face of these, and the bastardisation of the concept of the Art of Healthcare.
The post Why you fail your patient if you only think of them as their health problem appeared first on The Art of Healthcare.
The paradigm of (most) Healthcare professionals as the "fixer" is outdated. (Don't get me wrong I very much appreciate the surgeons who have put me back together when I've busted myself).
If we want to support healthier communities, then us as the health professional need to empower our patients to take control of their health, make the healthy choices, and live their healthy lives.
Jennifer George joins me to talk about how we can do that by entering into empowering patient partnerships.
We talk through;
Therapeutic relationships
How to create partnership
Engaging patients that are seeking for us to "fix" them
What happens when patients aren't empowered
Flexing our empathy muscles
Why compassion, empathy, and communication are harder than a clinical skill, plus what to do about it
Why we need to believe in our patients
The post Empowering patient partnerships appeared first on The Art of Healthcare.
Personalizing Healthcare to every patient is hard work right?
Yeah it is
AND
It's only harder in when you get started, once you get used to it, it's no harder than not personalizing the care you give. Plus you get better outcomes for your patients, and enjoy yourself more.
Dr Nick Kimber joins me for a conversation about personalizing Healthcare. For our patients and clients.
We talk;
Barriers to progress when care is not personalized
Benefits of a personalized approach
Some tips to begin to personalize your approach
Becoming a key person in someone's life
Why science is never 100% conclusive
The problem with scientific theory when we don't extrapolate it out into practice
The post Personalising healthcare appeared first on The Art of Healthcare.
I'd imagine most healthcare professionals view themselves as a giving person. After all, we're looking after patients day in day out. Most of us didn't get into it for the cash - although some may have.
We can just keep giving. Giving to our patients, giving to our colleagues, giving to systems that haven't been fully set up to support us. Giving can feel good, we feel like we're doing something worthwhile.
BUT if we just keep giving without question where does that lead us? We follow a career progression not of our own choosing. We give to a system that isn't designed to value us. When one patient goes another comes in to take their place and we start over. We stop giving to ourselves.
Nurse Jacqui O'Connor joins me on the podcast to talk about how we can do healthcare more authentically.
We talk through
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Burnout
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Setting our values
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Learning the tools of boundaries
- Rubbing off on others
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Moral injury in healthcare
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Enabling the system not to change
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Shame and guilt in healthcare
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Shaping a career path that aligns with who you are
The post Delivering Authentic Healthcare appeared first on The Art of Healthcare.
Connecting with our patients is often the hardest part of our job as health providers.
Often the pathology is straightforward but we just can't seem to be able to communicate with the person in a way that elicits a positive change.
My mate Heather Watson reckons that to improve that connection we need to be more vulnerable. She joins us today to talk about how to build vulnerability into our practice, and our lives.
We talk through
What vulnerability is in a Healthcare interaction
What can happen when we practice with vulnerability
The barriers that pop up if we aren't vulnerable
Fear of being wrong
Fear of blame
Iterative process in health improvement
Being creative and curious in practice
Starting to understand yourself better
Actually SEEING your patients and their challenges, not just their diagnosis
The post Building vulnerability into your practice appeared first on The Art of Healthcare.
We all got into Healthcare to help people, and we do get to help a lot of people.
AND
A challenge for a lot of Healthcare professionals is that we dont understand the value that we deliver to our patients and clients. We undervalue ourselves, and in
The post What’s your real value? appeared first on The Art of Healthcare.
We all got into Healthcare to help people, and we do get to help a lot of people.
AND
A challenge for a lot of Healthcare professionals is that we don't understand the value that we deliver to our patients and clients. We undervalue ourselves, and in turn are undervalued by others - which makes us grumpy.
We all need to start to understand the value that we can provide to patients. This value isn't just in a monetary sense, although it's often easiest to think about it that way.
Victor Ahipene joins us to help us understand and articulate our value whether patients pay you, or you get funded by insurers or through the public system. It's great for us, and plays a huge role in how we connect with our patients and how we can assist them to get better.
We talk through
Why being a "people person" isn't enough to really connect with a patient
What primary rapport is, and what secondary rapport is
Why you don't need to ask someone about their cat
Different ways you can think about your value
Why you're doing your patients a disservice if you don't value your skillset
Why you are an "expert"
How to set and meet expectations
Why practice doesn't actually make perfect
The post What’s your real value? appeared first on The Art of Healthcare.
Anyone who has worked in healthcare long enough will recognise that there are parts of it that leave a bit to be desired, parts of it that are slightly broken, parts of it that are a bit sick.
BUT can they be cured?
Travis Christofferson is a health researcher and author of "Tripping over the truth" "Ketones, the fourth fuel" and "Curable"
With that last title, Travis investigates some of the areas that are broken, and some of the ways we can "cure" the healthcare system.
Strap in as we chat through
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Why we get into trouble if we soley rely on intuition
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That we're not as rational as we think we are
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How bias shows up in our decision making
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The incentives we respond to, even when we think we aren't
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How we can apply checks and balances to our intuition going awry
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Capping the downside of health problems
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What best practice is and how we can find it
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Moneyballing Medicine
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Advanced healthcare for the future
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Solving Zebra problems
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DIY fecal transplants
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And how to think differently for the greater good
The post Is healthcare curable? appeared first on The Art of Healthcare.
Emma Webb is the founder of Studio Atawhai which offers Māori cultural safety training for health professionals. Creating a safe space for conversations about race in an online webinar format, she is a physiotherapist, and is passionate about Maori health development here in New Zealand.
In this conversation we talk about;
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trying to understand the health problem in the context of the patient's life
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making positive health impacts through opening up new health possibilities
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the conscious and unconscious limitations placed on us
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questioning what we were taught
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some of the barriers we face to doing great work
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learning from indigenous health practices
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the danger of people and systems who think the same way we do
Hope you enjoy
The post Questioning our conditioning appeared first on The Art of Healthcare.
Patients come to see us in the middle of a health challenge. Their resilience is tested as they try to navigate it, and often ours is too.
This week we're joined by Golnaz Tabibnia, an affective neuroscientist at UC Irvine studying self-regulation in adults and author of the fantastic paper "An affective neuroscience model of building resilience in adults"
We'll chat through
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The simple three route model of building resilience in adulthood
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The neuroscience behind each of the pathways
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Examples of strategies that activate each of the pathways
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Why we should be attempting to cope, and the multiple benefits that has
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One of the ways that stress makes it harder to recover your health
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Why just doing one positive thing can have many benefits
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How to switch off your default mode network
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How to watch for hidden opportunities to build resilience
The full paper can be found here
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0149763420304085
The post The neuroscience of resilience appeared first on The Art of Healthcare.
Most people don't speak medicine
This is a problem for us Health professionals because we've been trained to only speak medicine. This can unwittingly lead to a disconnect between us and our patients making healthy progress so much more difficult.
We're joined by Rachel Callander to help us bridge this divide - and #hottip it's up to us to do it, NOT our patients.
Rachel is a sought after healthcare communication trainer and speaker who comes from a place of lived experience
We cover off
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Why it's difficult for us to explain health concepts simply
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Untraining our learnings
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Identifying our fear in communication
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Communicating for understanding (our own and our patients)
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Communicating for progress
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How to shift from jargon to empowering communication
The post Our Language shapes our landscape appeared first on The Art of Healthcare.
Welcome to the Art of Healthcare podcast
Here is what it's all about
Cheers
Chris
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