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Breaking bad news and personality assessment
1Department of Behavioral Sciences, Tel Aviv University Medical School, Israel and Whitby Mental Health Centre, 700 Gordon St, Whitby, Ontario L1N 5S9, Canada.
Patient Education and Counseling
|May 25, 2002
Summary
Assessing patient personality can improve how medical teams break bad news to seriously ill individuals. This approach, focusing on facts for obsessive-compulsive personalities, aided patient coping and staff experience.
Area of Science:
- Medical Communication
- Psychiatry
- Patient Education
Background:
- Breaking bad news is a critical yet challenging aspect of patient care and counseling.
- Existing guidelines for delivering difficult news do not typically consider patient personality traits.
Observation:
- A case study involving a patient diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is presented.
- Psychiatric consultation was utilized to assess the patient's personality structure.
- The patient was identified as having an obsessive-compulsive personality.
Findings:
- Medical staff were advised to focus on factual information, minimizing emotional expression, when communicating with this specific patient.
- This tailored approach facilitated adaptive coping for the patient.
- The medical team also reported a positive experience with the procedure.
Implications:
- Personality assessment may enhance the process of breaking bad news to patients with serious illnesses.
- Further research is needed to determine the generalizability and cost-effectiveness of this approach across diverse patient populations and clinical settings.
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