Health care practitioners have traditionally relied on clinical heuristics to select, encode and process information from the patient. When a patient is presenting with multiple and complex issues, these heuristics reduce the patient’s difficult question of “what’s wrong with me” to easier ones, such as “is this person presenting with depression”? The use of heuristics is then reinforced by operationalizing evidenced-based care into protocols, procedures and checklists designed to increase efficiency and reduce variation in process.
Building More Trust Between Doctors and Patients
Health care practitioners have traditionally relied on clinical heuristics to select, encode and process information from the patient. The trouble with this approach is that medical professionals are so busy looking for what they’re trained to find that they can often completely ignore information staring them in the face. The answer is to build strong trust-based patient relationships, in which clinicians can work more responsively with patients to uncover and eventually treat their traumas. At each interaction, the clinician requests feedback from patients — offering an opportunity for patients to air their concerns and provide data in their own way, which takes clinicians out of their heuristic box. And although the process creates extra work on the spot, it also enables the therapist to respond and adapt promptly to what the patient is telling them and ensures that a patient is treated in the context of their culture and preferences.