JoanSNaidorfDO

Summary

• I wrote a book!
  Changing how we Think About
  Difficult Patients:
  A Guide for Physicians and Healthcare Professionals
  by Joan Naidorf DO
  Published by the American Academy of Physician Leadership
  Coming in 2022
  
  Physicians, nurses and other clinical professionals begin their careers with the highest of hopes and ideals for compassionate and efficient patient care. Along the way, consistent problems arise in their interactions with difficult patients. We get so frustrated and so discouraged that a lot of us start planning our career exit strategy.
  
  What’s to be done about the problem?
  It turns out that a lot can be done. By looking at the expectations we place on good patients and then the areas where things go awry, professionals can gain a lot of insight in to the negative thoughts and feelings that we ourselves create in our interactions with difficult patients. Some of the negative thoughts that professionals harbor about difficult patients are learned during their training and become unhelpful and destructive thought habits. The negative feelings that professionals have towards their difficult patients leads to frustration, cynicism and burn-out.
  
  With the introduction of a modern approach to habit change and thought management, professionals can learn to manage their thoughts about the patients who challenge them. They can accept their patients just as they are and just how they present in the chaotic setting of the emergency department, clinic, or hospital unit.
  My mission is to teach health care professionals how to value themselves more as they change the way that they think about difficult patients.