"What was your name again?" Remembering names by Susan Keane Baker
Health care is a relationship business,
so the ability to remember the names of
your patients is important. When you are
introduced to someone at a social event,
do you forget the person’s name as soon
as you hear it? When you are busy, do you
have greater difficulty remembering names?
Dr. Paula Hall of Indianapolis told me that
if a physician remembers a patient’s name,
it’s because of one of four things:
The doctor is not
busy enough.
The doctor is really
smart.
The patient is really
nice, and has probably plied the practice
and the physician with food in the recent
past.
The patient is really
challenging to work with and everyone
in the practice knows his or her name.
While almost everyone can excuse an occasional
memory lapse, patients do expect that their
physicians will care enough to know and use
their names. How can you increase the likelihood
of being able to remember a patient’s name
when you need it?
Standard
operating procedure: Everyone reviews the
schedule at the beginning of the day.
Have you experienced the sinking feeling of
having someone approach you on the street
and you draw a complete blank on the person’s
name? And if you have a relative or friend
with you, you use him/her as a safety net.
"Introduce yourself first - I can’t remember
her name" you urgently gasp to your friend.
If you had seen the name of the approaching
person earlier in the day, you would be able
to remember the name.
Everyone
routinely uses patient names when greeting
them and addressing them. Your
colleagues can be a safety net. As you are
entering the exam room, and you hear a colleague
say, "Dr. Djerf will be right with you, Mrs.
Fotiades," you are saved once again from the
negative perceptions that could be created
by your poor memory.
Discovering
something personal about a patient increases
your chances of remembering. Christine
Beechner RN of Greenwich Hospital in Connecticut
has found that learning something personal
about a patient makes it easy to look beyond
the physical reason that the patient has presented
for care.
Have
a system for recording information.
Dr. Earl Miller of Williamsport, PA told me
that his time-proven strategy for building
rapport with patients was to write down the
last thing that the patient told him before
leaving his office. When the patient returned,
he would glance at his note and remember the
conversation. Remarking on that last conversation
created the perception that he had been thinking
about the patient since the last visit, or
that he found the person very interesting.
And glancing at the record to recall the last
conversation also gave him an opportunity
to remember the patient’s name.
But make sure that the
system works. Dr. Richard Corson
of Bound Brook, NJ told me about his experience
as a patient when he was in college. His physician
entered the exam room and asked "How are things
at Rutgers?" Dr. Corson didn’t attend Rutgers,
and said so. The physician continued on, commenting
on topics that had no relation to Dr. Corson.
Don’t make
assumptions. A gastroenterologist
entered his office where a nurse was providing
information to a new patient. "This is Mrs.
Fairchild?" he asked the nurse. "No, this
is Mrs. Copeland," she replied. "Well, I’ll
see her while I am here," he said. Had he
spoken directly to the patient, and introduced
himself first, the patient would have given
her name and he would have avoided the perception
that one patient is the same as another to
him.
Look
for cues. A monogram on a shirt
or pin; a name on a key chain, an insurance
form for you to sign, can provide enough information
to enable you to remember the person’s name.
Just be careful in distinguishing whether
you really remember the name, or are making
a best guess. Best guesses on names don’t
impress.
Create
mental pictures. Kathy Phetaplace
RN of Nova Scotia teaches people how to remember
names and uses her own to illustrate how.
She describes how feta cheese appears at a
place setting on a table. Feta-place. Wendy
Hilboldt, EMT, describes a hill with a bolt
of lightning striking it to help people remember
her name. If you have a name that lends itself
to this technique, describe your name and
then ask if the patient ever does something
similar to help people remember his name.
Ask your patient
about the meaning of his or her name.
Darrell Panethiere told me that his name is
French for maker or baker of bread, and as
my married name was going to be Baker, discovering
the similarity increased my ability to recall
his name. (Then it got even easier to remember
after he served as my husband’s best man.)
Use your patient’s
name several times during the course of your
conversation. Concentrating enough
to use the name in conversation creates repetition,
which aids memory.
Use the person’s name
in six silent sentences. Your patient’s
name is Tina Alcott. Silently use her name
in six sentences. For example: "Her name is
Tina Alcott, and Tina is my sister’s name.
Her name is Tina Alcott and my first grade
teacher’s name was Alcott. Tina Alcott - her
records will always be easy to locate as her
last name begins with ‘A.’ Tina Alcott - I
wonder if Tina is a nickname for Athena; then
she would be Athena Alcott, or AA for short.
I wonder if Alcott Park is named for someone
in Tina Alcott’s family. Tina Alcott - her
nickname could be Tiny Tina as she is very
petite." This is the best strategy I have
learned to remember names!
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