Working in a medical office can be rewarding as well as demanding. Patients may be in pain, frustrated, angry and are carrying a wide range of emotions with them into the office. It is a privilege for healthcare workers and medical administrators to help patients who are hurting and struggling, but it also can be quite difficult. In addition to their unique blend of emotions, patients also carry with them a unique blend of experiences, which is why it’s important for medical workers to remember that everyone is different.
One person’s experience is not another’s. It takes a well-informed, organized, patient and dependable person to navigate a medical office setting and to help patients ultimately have a good experience.
In a medical administrative assistant training program for a degree or diploma, one will learn the importance of embracing differences and diversity. It’s critical to achieve this understanding and act on it in one’s daily work if one hopes to better understand each patient and to work against bias and discrimination in the workplace.
Here are three tips for being an agent of change and an advocate for diversity.
Tip #1: Remember Your Audience
One of the most important steps in learning to embrace difference and diversity is to think about each person as one person in an audience of many. We know that no one is exactly the same as another, but how often do we actually lean into that truth and let it guide our actions? In the healthcare field, it is all too easy to treat everyone as a faceless person with a problem. But ailments are as different as people, and one can’t expect to cure someone if they treat them as everyone else. It’s important to remember that we all have different stories, experiences, cultures, upbringings and values in our lives–and this affects the things we do and say.
So if you start the process by focusing on the individual, you’ll begin to embrace, appreciate and learn from differences. Take time before you speak to a patient to remember they are a unique person. It will change the way you approach them.
Tip #2: Don’t Press
We are all full of stories. We have personal stories connected to virtually every experience in our lives. It’s very easy to tell your own personal story if you feel comfortable. But talking about a personal experience or story actually is quite uncomfortable for many people. Some people take time to tell their stories because they need to feel safe and to feel like they can trust the person trying to help them. That’s also why one needs to remember the individual. Sharing stories is great if two people enjoy the exchange.
But sometimes people can feel offended and pressured to share details about their lives in order to please or appease healthcare workers. This only increases if a patient has a difficult or troubling story to tell because he or she has been impacted by racism, sexism or other forms of bias and discrimination. So don’t press for details if the patient seems overwhelmed or uncomfortable. Allow the patient to express at his or her own level of comfort. If details are necessary to provide optimal care, make sure you inform the patient that you know it can be uncomfortable talking about certain details but you need to know to help the person. Then let the person decide what they would like to share. Never pressure a patient to share a story that he or she does not want to share.
Tip #3: Believe the Patient
One of the most cited anecdotal stories of complaint in the healthcare field is that healthcare workers don’t believe or listen to patients. This is when medicine literally can turn deadly. If healthcare workers aren’t listening to how a patient is describing the pain in her chest and sends her home, what happens when the woman dies from a heart attack in the car?
To give the very best care, both practitioners and administrators must learn the art of listening and believing what their patients are saying. Without it, patients not only get hurt but they feel the weight of discrimination and bias. Even if it isn’t actual discrimination or bias, a patient may feel that way and the damage is done.
In a medical administrative assistant training program, one will learn these important principles and more. It’s important to start the foundation of every medical job with an understanding of difference and diversity so that one can become a champion of change in the workplace. Practice these three key tips to help fight against gender, identity and racial discrimination in the healthcare field.