The World Health Organization has identified an infodemic around COVID-19. To be sure, it can be tough for anybody to make sense of the information flooding around the coronavirus. But when it comes to battling this infodemic, the WHO is banking on trust. In this episode of 10 Minutes to Better Patient Communication, I take […]
Patient Education
Dr. Beverly Zavaleta talks about how getting cancer changed her approach to patients
When this physician was diagnosed with cancer, she confronted her assumptions about patients, communication, and education. Board-certified family physician Dr. Beverly Zavaleta tells us what happened, and how it changed her practice. Listen below, or read the transcript. At Health Communication Partners, we work quite a lot with communication between patients and clinicians. But what happens […]
A resource for addressing microaggressions in healthcare
Everyone has bias. Implicit bias has been shown to contribute to health disparities. Recent research has shown how public health, medical care, and human service providers can unintentionally contribute to health disparities. The evidence that physician behavior and decision making may contribute to racial inequalities in health care is difficult to reconcile with the fact […]
Podcast hits 25k downloads
Thanks to you, we’ve made a significant podcasting achievement: 25,000 downloads. Thank you! So today I’m sharing some milestones on the way to 25K. We’re growing! Now you can hear 10 Minutes to Better Patient Communication here, as well as on Apple Pocasts, Spotify, Google Play and Stitcher Thank you for downloading, sharing, subscribing, and offering suggestions for […]
How can patients’ misconceptions be helpful?
An Ob-Gyn told me, with some frustration, that she regularly encounters adult patients who have misconceptions about basic female anatomy. An Ob-patient educator agreed: “Sure. I’m often saying to patients, ‘our plumbing and our other parts are close together down there.’” Whether it’s about anatomy or something else, misconceptions happen. Patients may walk into the […]
4 Reminders when communicating about a health threat
The coronavirus has people talking, reading, tweeting, and viewing. (Image of ultrastructural morphology exhibited by the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV), via CDC.) A forthcoming article from the Medical Journal of Australia asserts that “It is too early to tell how this outbreak will unfold, but we need to be prepared at all levels of the healthcare […]