Dealing with angry patients

This is part of our Rotation posting. For my rotation group (Group A), this is the third rotation activity, after the visit to KKB and the community medicine activities.

I, for one, wasn't looking forward to this activity, mainly because I dread getting scolded. The number of times I've been scolded by someone other than my mum can be counted with one hand.

Anyways, in the morning.....Miss Reiko Yeap gave us a briefing about how we should go about dealing with these angry patients, how to soothe and calm them down.

However, it is easier said than done.

We were divided into 3 groups of 7 people, and 3 simulated patients rotated between the 3 groups.

The first patient to enter the room , a Chinese lady ( which I think I've seen act as an SP before) didn't seem that angry. So she wasn't that scary at all. She even burst out laughing when one of us asked a silly question. But I somehow didn't have the nerves to volunteer to go up to deal with her yet. Redhuan, Yee Wei and Kwan went.

I finally volunteered when the second patient, an Indian guy. He looked like a person who is angry and irritated for real. He didn't even smile at us. I didn't know how to calm him down. He wasn't happy and kept on demanding that I explain why he had to wait outside for 2 hours. I kept on saying that I was sorry to hear that and I would look into matters. But he didn't seem satisfied with that. And when I explained that maybe there were a lot of patients waiting outside....he retorted back......'I was the only patient waiting outside!'
Well....umm....what can I say? lol
And when I first said that I'm sorry, but things like that are 'unavoidable'......oops.....BIG mistake.....he capitalized on that immediately.

Anyways, the third patient- another female......was by far the funniest one.

She described a nurse who mistreated her as ......'the one with a lot of pimples on the face.....the fat one.....'

When it was Nurul's turn....she said ' Do you know who am I? I am a Datin.... Datin Maria!!'

And the funniest part- was when she talked about her husband.......'You know.....Datuk is very 'demanding'. Maybe that's one of the reasons for my chest pain.'

Ok, at that point, the rest of us in the room couldn't suppress our laughter any longer.

Anyways, it turned out to be quite a fun activity, with some hilarious moments and some scary moments.

Hopefully, we will be more prepared to face the many different types of patients we have to deal with in the future, when we go out to the real world.