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Surgeons offer keys to dealing with unhappy premium IOL patients
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KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. — In an interactive role-playing session here, several surgeons offered pearls for dealing with an unhappy patient.
A panel discussion at Kiawah Eye 2012 led by John A. Hovanesian, MD, FACS, covered the best methods for dealing with unhappy premium IOL patients. The panel included Larry Berstein, MD, FAAO; Steve Charles, MD; Uday Devgan, MD; and Rajesh Rajpal, MD.
Something as simple as where the physician sits in relation to the patient can be key, Dr. Devgan said. He recommended that ophthalmologists move their chairs to beside the patient rather than across from them.
“I move next to the patient so we are looking at the chart together, and I say, ‘Let’s see how we can handle this,’ as opposed to being in the chess opponent position across from them,” Dr. Devgan said.
Dr. Hovanesian said it is important to always be on the patient’s side and not argue or be confrontational. He also recommended mitigating the patient’s anger at the first opportunity.
“Before I go into the room, I have my staff give me some sort of warning on the chart that I am about to see an unhappy patient. So, I have their test results in front of me, and I walk in the room and say, ‘Looking at your results, I can see why you are upset. Let’s talk about why this happened and what we can do about it,” Dr. Hovanesian said.
The panel participants agreed that when a patient is unhappy with a result from a surgery performed by another surgeon, it is best to allow the other surgeon the opportunity to take corrective action. Dr. Devgan said he will call the other surgeon and ask if they would like to have the opportunity to correct the situation, because sometimes they would just as well let him take care of the situation. In either case it is important to give the other surgeon the benefit of the doubt and to “throw water on the fire instead of gas,” he said.
Another point the panel agreed on was to let the patient know that they will need to give the implant time before taking corrective action.
Other key points addressed were to acknowledge the patient complaint, work with the patient to minimize the negatives and acknowledge the complaints of patients’ family members.
- Disclosure: No products or companies are mentioned that would require financial disclosure.