While the subject of care quality is usually focused on improving the delivery of care by providers and institutions, patients play a significant role in supporting high-quality care provision. Partnerships between patients and their care providers bring unique benefits to the care process and contribute to many other outcomes (Pomey, Hihat, Khalifa, Lebel, & Néron, 2015). Personally, I do not consider myself to be a difficult patient because I follow the standards of behavior during appointments, follow care providers’ requests and recommendations, and cooperate with them throughout the process of examination, diagnostics, and treatment.
I believe that, in order to support care providers in delivering high-quality care, we should communicate with them clearly and openly. As explained by McLaughlin and Hays (2017), healthy communication between patients and providers is essential to ensuring patient safety and improving care outcomes. By concealing important details or refusing to share certain information with providers, patients put the quality of the care they receive at risk. Thus, patients should give all of the relevant details about their health to their care providers to get better quality care in return.
I have seen patients disrupting the care environment on a number of occasions. Recently, when I was at a clinic, a woman who came in nearly 40 minutes late started yelling at the staff to let her see the doctor, even though he had already admitted the next patient.
After several minutes, she proceeded to enter the exam room despite the staff’s protest, and nurses had to escort her out of the clinic. This disrupted the patient flow because care providers were distracted and tense. I think that, in order to prevent similar situations in the future, the clinic should have increased security oversight in the building and notify all late patients by phone that they will not be admitted if they arrive. This would help to minimize the number of angry patients while also enabling the clinic to remove them from the facility quickly.
References
McLaughlin, D. B., & Hays, J. M. (2017). Healthcare operations management (3rd ed.). Washington, DC: AUPHA Press.
Pomey, M. P., Hihat, H., Khalifa, M., Lebel, P., Néron, A., & Dumez, V. (2015). Patient partnership in quality improvement of healthcare services: Patients’ inputs and challenges faced. Patient Experience Journal, 2(1), 29-42.