Ace Your Med School Interview: Angry Parent in A&E (Empathy Scenario) | PostGradMedic

hello ladies and gentlemen Holly here and welcome back to the channel today we are going to be going through another practice question to help you ace your med school interview so imagine that you're a doctor for one medical second and a parent has brought their child into a anywhere you happen to be working the current waiting time in the department is more than an hour and they're getting quite angry that the wait is so long so how are you going to deal with this situation so just some background information for this question the NHS as of writing currently has a maximum wait time of 4 hours from entrance to the department to having left the hospital across all departments in the country and rather surprisingly you do actually see higher caseloads in the summer rather than the winter which is what I would have intuitively thought but apparently it's because of a higher number of sprains cuts and bruises from increased physical activity and just some statistics for reference the current median wait time as NHS departments is around 150 minutes two and a half hours across all instances as of writing when all patients who are both admitted and not admitted to the hospital are considered in that sample so even for those of us who don't have any children obviously two and a half hours it's quite easy to imagine why if you were a parent bringing your child in you'd start to get irate their most pressing concern is going to be for their child and that parent is probably going to be feeling quite helpless and frustrated because again if they thought it was something they could reasonably deal with on their own they wouldn't have brought the child to A&E in the first place and there might also be other factors stressing them as well such as other children they might have at home and they've had to bring this ones at the hospital they might need to go to work on time they might have meetings other family dependent on them there's a whole load of other factors that you will likely know nothing about so firstly when you're handling this sort of situation it is important to demonstrate to that parent that you understand that they are feeling angry and you feel that it's perfectly reasonable for them to feel that way NHS wait times particularly during peak admittance periods can be very long and obvious if they're suffering or stressed those periods will feel even longer so a good way to handle this and a good thing to demonstrate knowledge of in your med school interview is the ice system which is taught at many medical schools to make sure that the perspectives of the concerned individual are heard and taken on board so ice stands for ideas concerns and expectations and the first of these ideas is all about the beliefs of the person in question why do they think in this case the weight might be taking so long the second one and a little bit more obvious is concerns number two why are they frustrated what is it that's bothering them and when asked it will probably be one of the things that we discussed earlier although of course it might not be so always be sure to ask and listen very carefully to what they say and lastly number three is expectations and it simply refers to the course of action that the angry parent in this case thinks would be best now obviously you have your own rules to consider as a doctor you may not be able to comply with everything they want you to do they might not understand the situation as well as you do and they obviously again have no idea of structure and guidelines that you as the doctor would be working in but just in the same way that you have no idea what they're outside stressors are so whether or not you can comply fully on this last idea at least the ice system allows them to feel like you have taken their ideas on board and lastly it's good general advice just be polite and courteous as you would be in any professional situation you should be able to demonstrate empathy and understanding of their situation as well as trying to work to any expectations as well as you're able to and lastly just explain that their child will be seen as quickly as possible and nobody that will allow the child to come to harm that's what the NHS is there for and ultimately everyone is doing everything they can so that's it guys if you have input don't forget to let me know down in the comments you've got any questions just contact me either on here or through my website at post-grad Medicom where you should definitely and check out all my other articles on acing your med school interview passing the UK cat or be mad or even gam sir if that's what you're in for and I wish you the very best of luck with your interview

Channel: Ollie Burton

Views: 5,572

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: ollie, burton, ollie burton, postgradmedic, medicine, medical school, med school, vlog, blog, ollieplays, ollieguitar, graduate entry medicine, university, education, diary, med school interview, interview, accident and emergency, accident, emergency, A&E, anger, empathy

Id: DkxrwsM60UA

Length: 4min 54sec (294 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 31 2017