Doctors are healers. We want to deliver good news.
“That worrisome PSA test was a false positive.”
“Your breast biopsy was negative.”
“You are responding to the treatment.”
You get to share high-fives with your patient. That’s one of the reasons you went into medicine.
But biology doesn’t always cooperate. You may have given it your all, and all that’s left is bad news.
Still, there’s more “doctoring to be done.”
Maya Angelou once said: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Sometimes it’s not what you say. It’s how you say it.
Your tone. Body language. How much time you give the patient—and their family—to process bad news. Can you still offer hope in the face of bad news? Even if the 5-year survival rate is 3%, not everyone perishes within that window. There are outliers.
What do you do if the patient cries? Is it OK for you to express emotion? Even share a tear? Hug your patient?
I don’t remember learning any of this in medical school. Or residency. But I have observed some are better at these discussions than others. I also believe these skills can be taught and learned.
A shout out to Dr. Tony Orsini, whose organization, The Orsini Way, teaches doctors how to deliver bad news. We did a two-part podcast series with him in the not-too-distant past.
If you get better at delivering bad news, it will still be painful to utter the words. But you would have discharged your duty with grace. And the patient and their family will remember your compassion during the worst moments of their life.
