Communication, explanation and understanding

Submitted by tonyplant on April 17, 2006 - 15:02.

Judges in the US are attending a programme of classes to educate them in the science and medicine that underlies the detection, diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of disease. The programme is intended to help in the ajudication of medical malpractice cases.

In addition to acquiring a scientific knowledge base, judges said they learned that understanding physician-patient communication is key to interpreting complex medical cases.

Ohio trial Judge Lee Sinclair said he was particularly enlightened by a mock exercise in which a newly diagnosed cancer patient evaluated treatment options with several doctors, including a surgeon and an oncologist.

When the judges got together to discuss the conversation, “what you realized was everyone in the room heard things in a different way,” Sinclair said. “Often what you hear in medical malpractice cases is the physician saying he explained it to the patient and the patient saying it never happened.”

The insights are especially valuable in helping judges eliminate potentially frivolous lawsuits or find alternate ways to resolve legal disputes without going to trial, said Marvin J. Garvis, a Maryland federal judge.

I found this exercise interesting for a number of reasons. How many times have we heard someone say, "But I told you that", or "You never told me about that". Sometimes, we have been told information but the stress or shock of the circumstances under which we were told means that we don't remember. Sometimes, we retain fragments of the information, rather than its context.

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BACP On Disagreeing With Layard's Proposals

Submitted by tonyplant on February 12, 2006 - 18:03.

A while ago the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy issued a press release that criticised some of the Layard proposals: specifically those calling for the training of more therapists (BACP argues that a sufficient number already exist), and those that emphasis the importance of the cognitive behavioural therapy approach above other strategies.

Economists argue that anxiety and depression are a burden on the economy. Mental Health specialists (among others) counter that they are an unaffordable burden on society. Layard says that happiness should be seen as more than a health issue. The BACP unhelpfully offers the counter-claim that

Unhappiness is the consequence of more than a diagnosed condition and always arises from a life situation.

And they offer counselling etc. as part of the solution. Which still looks like medicalisation of a psychosocial issue to me. I will put more about this in another post.

 

Copyright 2006, Tony Plant Happystance Project

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