About this episode
Have you had one of those consults in which you're thinking, huh, sounds like the patient's goals are clear, it's really that the clinician consulting us disagrees with those goals? To what extent is it our job as consultants to navigate, manage, or attend to clinician distress? What happens when that clinician distress leads eventually to conflict between the consulting clinician and the palliative care team? Today our guests Sara Johnson, Yael Schenker, & Anne Kelly discuss these issues, including: A recent paper first authored by Yael asking if attending to clinician distress is our job, published in JPSM. See also the wonderful conversation in the response letters from multidisciplinary providers (e.g. of course that's our job! And physicians may not be trained in therapy, but many social workers and chaplains are, and certainly psychologists). A SPACE pneumonic for addressing clinician conflict developed by Sara Johnson, Anne Kelly and others. They presented this at a recent AAHPM/HPNA meeting. See below for what SPACE stands for. We referenced a prior episode on therapeutic presence and creating a holding space with Kerri Brenner and Dani Chammas, and this article by Kerri. We talked about the role of the consultant, including this classic paper on consultation etiquette by Diane Meier and Larry Beresford. Enjoy! -Alex Smith SPACE: Navigating Conflict with Colleagues "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response." -Viktor E. Frankl SPACE: Conflict Navigation Toolkit Self-awareness: Pause & Notice Before Responding What am I feeling? Take own temperature. Where am I coming from? What do I need? Perspective-Taking: Ask-Tell-Ask Where are they coming from? Check your understanding with them. "Tell me how you're thinking about this?" "I hear you are concerned about…is that right?" Agenda: Yours and theirs, then focus on common ground Where are we going together? "It see
