VA's narrative medicine program improves senior patient care, docs' study finds - - McKnight's Long-Term Care News

1 year ago 66

Narrative medicine — the process of listening to and signaling diligent stories — helps physicians amended the prime of attraction they supply to older adults, according to the aesculapian students and doctors progressive successful a caller Veterans Administration study.

To measure the worth of communicative medicine practice, investigators worked with aesculapian students and module members astatine Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine. The schoolhouse uses the My Life, My Story (MLMS) model to implicit diligent interviews during students’ geriatrics rotations successful the session and during location visits oregon nursing location visits.

The researchers arranged radical discussions with the students and idiosyncratic interviews with module members. The researchers analyzed themes that arose during these discussions and interviews. 

The accusation received erstwhile signaling a communicative of the patient’s idiosyncratic past successful the aesculapian grounds is valuable, the results revealed. The bulk of students said that they believed the MLMS acquisition would positively power the mode they practiced medicine. Engaging successful their patients’ stories improved the prime of their diligent care, they said.

Similarly, module members reported that the signifier of communicative medicine changed however they framed diligent decisions and helped them to usher elder patients toward the astir due attraction environments and attraction modalities astatine the extremity of life.

“Much of aesculapian grooming focuses connected the aesculapian problems that patients have, but it is besides important to cognize the diligent arsenic a person,” writer Shivani Kumari Jindal, MD, MPH, a geriatrician with the VA Boston Healthcare System, said. “Starting with what matters astir to patients tin assistance signifier the attraction being discussed and offered, truthful it is much aligned with a person’s values, goals and beingness experiences.”

When providers conscionable patients aboriginal successful older age, they sometimes hide that these patients person lived progressive lives earlier the wellness encounter, added co-author Megan E. Young, MD. “Narrative medicine, specifically My Life, My Story, is simply a instrumentality to recognize patients’ anterior experiences and summation penetration into the idiosyncratic that is sitting successful the infirmary furniture oregon successful the clinic.”

Full findings were published successful the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

Related articles:

Older adults flocking to telehealth: comfortableness levels improve, but concerns remain

New prognostic instrumentality supports end-of-life discussions for dementia patients, families: study

Palliative attraction instrumentality helps foster end-of-life conversations

Read Entire Article