'Present, not perfect': Cranston's Meyer seeks to bring `personal connection' to healthcare

By Jen Cowart
Posted 5/25/16

Difficult conversations are a part of the healthcare profession. Bedside manner is often touted as making or breaking one's experiences with medical professionals, and Cranston's Elaine Meyer, PhD, RN, is working hard to change the

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'Present, not perfect': Cranston's Meyer seeks to bring `personal connection' to healthcare

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Difficult conversations are a part of the healthcare profession.

Bedside manner is often touted as making or breaking one’s experiences with medical professionals, and Cranston’s Elaine Meyer, PhD, RN, is working hard to change the emotional standard of care, and the way those in the medical profession communicate with patients and their families in order to improve those experiences.

Through her work at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School’s teaching hospital, Meyer is sharing her important message with those who are just getting started in the profession, as well as with those who have years of experience – that it’s more important to be present than perfect, and not having all the answers is OK. How patients feel, and how they are treated, is most important, even if it makes a medical professional feel more vulnerable.

Meyer recently shared her message from her own personal perspective – both as a patient struggling with her own medical issues and as a newly minted nursing professional – through a TEDtalk she presented at TEDxLongwood.

“It’s all in the perspective,” Meyer said. “It’s not about having the all the answers, but knowing that we’ll find them out together. These types of conversations make you vulnerable, and it makes you more accessible to people.”

When providing her training, Meyer cites seemingly simple gestures or words that make all the difference for patients, such as offering a hand to hold through a difficult procedure, sitting and listening to a patient’s concerns with a true sympathetic ear, or giving the reassurance to a patient that they’ll have someone watching over them throughout a procedure. Meyer’s training message shares the importance of medical professionals being able to listen, not judge, and not necessarily even being able to fix a problem, but just to be present.

Although acknowledging that knowing one’s technical area is of utmost importance – whether it’s oncology, gerontology, pediatrics, or anything in between – Meyer emphasizes that it’s often the smallest gestures that are equally as important as the technical knowledge.

“It has so much to do with establishing those relationships, those connections,” Meyer said. “I am trying to bring back the deep connection to the profession. There is such a gap there, and people are just craving that personal connection, that idea of having a doctor listen to you, of sharing the burden of the worrying with you and understanding you as a person.”

In her trainings, Meyer often uses an analogy to the “The Wizard of Oz.”

“‘The Wizard of Oz’ can help us to remember the key ingredients,” she said. “When I present this analogy, I always start with the Lion. I ask what it is that the Lion was searching for, and he was searching for courage. Many people wonder what courage has to do with it, but it takes courage for a healthcare professional to say, ‘I’m here with you,’ and it takes courage to know that you have the good sense to sit with someone and listen, the ability to relate at a personal level.”

She said often, people in the healthcare industry lack that courage.

“They are so afraid of the reactions and emotions of people, and they feel like they have to fix it, make it better, have the answers to all of the questions,” she said. “But they don’t have to do that. They just have to have the courage to sit and listen, to be present, not perfect.”

Meyer moves next to the character of the Scarecrow in the story.

“The Scarecrow had the brains,” she said. “You definitely need the medical knowledge and clinical experiences, there’s no question about that. If you’re in the room, you’ve got that. However, there’s so much emphasis on technical proficiency and expertise, we forget that it can’t be limited to just that. So much of our education is with the technical skills, but yet we’re lacking in the communication skills. We want people to listen, to understand, and to treat, but to be interested in how our lives are affected by these medical issues and how they respond to us as patients.”

Finally, Meyer focuses on the Tin Man, the character in the story who was lacking a heart.

“Acknowledging the heart is giving oneself permission to be your whole self as a clinician, to think about the kind of doctor you wanted to be when you started, to remember the values you hold, what’s important to you,” she said. “Difficult conversations involve all of it – the courage, the brains and the heart.”

Meyer has spoken all over the world, hoping to change the way healthcare professionals have difficult conversations and build relationships. She has seen crossover of her work in other areas, such as education.

“I believe that I’m providing the antidote to burnout in the medical profession,” Meyer said. “If you don’t invest in this part of the training, all the money you invested in the technical part of the training will walk right out the door when they burn out. So many in this profession feel like they are technicians versus healers, and there’s a big difference.”

Meyer’s TEDtalk, “On being present, not perfect,” can be viewed on YouTube.

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