Managing The Difficult Patient And Family

An acute hospitalization is one of the most stressful events patients and caregivers can experience. Many times the patient, caregiver or both can be irritable and anxious. Nursing workloads are also high and very stressful with many nurses struggling to get all of their patient care tasks completed on time. In this perfect storm of high stress patients and caregivers may lash out verbally due to fear, anxiety and other stressors. When nurses are unprepared to respond with emotional intelligence to these situations, patients and caregivers are often labeled “difficult.” When that happens the patient and family lose access to their nursing team support. This presentation has been developed to assist nurses with innovative communication strategies to de-escalate emotionally driven communication and foster ongoing caring relationships.