Enhancing #Patient #Care thru the application of Neuro Linguistic Programming- #NLP

This article would interest #Medical Practitioners, #Nurses,#Caregivers, #Doctors, and any one who is a #care #giver of #patients and #elderly.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is increasingly talked about as a method of therapy that has a lot to offer the #medical and #nursing professions, and some advocates of NLP have made very ambitious claims for it.

Ideas and techniques from NLP are already having an influence in professional training, as they are in other areas such as business and education. As a #primary care professional, interested in anything that will help you get more of a result within the time constraints of the average consultation; you may be curious about NLP but at the same time view it with a healthy dose of skepticism.

There are three areas in which NLP may be useful to you in your practice: -

1.      #consultation skills,

2.      #helping your #patients, and

3.      maintaining yourself against the #stresses of your job -

In an ideal world every patient would tell you everything you need to make a #diagnosis as soon as they come in. In practice, though, most patients will take a while - possibly longer than the time available - to feel comfortable enough to tell you what is really bothering them. If only you had some instant way to put them at their ease...

Fortunately, NLP has made a systematic study of how people who are naturally good at establishing rapport with others do it, and the resulting skills can easily be learned. It boils down to the observation that people feel more at ease with people who are like them.

Once #rapport is established, the patient will tend to follow your lead. With a patient who comes in highly agitated, you can lead them into a calmer state when rapport is established by gradually slowing down and talking more quietly yourself.

The NLP concept of #perceptual positions –

First position being when you see things from your own viewpoint,

Second position when you put yourself in the other person's shoes, and

Third position when you take a detached, objective viewpoint –

These perceptual positions can also give you a more rounded picture of what the patient needs.

To get the maximum understanding of any situation, you need to consider it from all three viewpoints, but it is all too easy to get stuck in the habit of using only one of them.

In the past, medical education has encouraged the view of the patient as a collection of symptoms; it can give you useful additional information to put yourself in the patient's shoes and imagine what the world looks like (and how you, the medical professional, appear) from their viewpoint.

NLP has many tools to assist you in actually helping the patient back to health.

A number of studies have shown that patients' self-rating of their overall health is an excellent predictor of how long they live. Most patients will trust you and will believe what you say (or what they think you are saying) about their health. Your view of the patient - reflected in the language you use, in voice tone and body language - has a significant influence on their recovery.

One of the 'presuppositions' of NLP - principles that you can act on as if they were true and notice what results you get - is that people have all the #resources they need to get better. When you act as if this principle is true, you avoid limiting the patient's potential for recovery through negative expectations.

Other useful principles are that #mind and body are one system - hence the ability of beliefs to influence health - and those symptoms are signals. It is worth asking 'what do these signals mean?' before rushing to treat them.

How would your view of your patients, and the way your consultations go, change if you adopted these principles?

How can NLP help you to maintain yourself in a demanding profession?

Most #Doctors in particular are notoriously bad at taking care of their own health. Particular patients may provoke a 'heart sink' reaction, and unfortunately dealing with some of your fellow professionals may also have a draining effect.

NLP has a wealth of tools for maintaining a #positive state. At a more sustainable level, how you feel in a consultation will be influenced, consciously and unconsciously, by your beliefs and your view of the world. Adopting the NLP principles will mean that consultations flow more easily and effectively.

When you find some interactions with patients or partners 'difficult', analysing what happens from a 'third position' detached viewpoint, as if you were a third-party observer, will make you feel less emotionally involved in the situation and allow you to understand it more objectively, perhaps noticing solutions you would have missed when considering it from 'first position'.

I invite you to work out these principles and investigate these ideas further for yourself. An increasing number of doctors and nurses are applying NLP in primary care with encouraging results. I am happy to share the link of an article published in the #British #journal of #Radiology- 2010 which will further help you to know the benefits of applying NLP, https://www.birpublications.org/doi/10.1259/bjr/14421796