Nurses across the country are being challenged every day to meet the needs of a sicker and more complex patient population. Difficult patients along with their families demand more nursing time and more facility resources, and can even jeopardize the personal safety of the nursing staff.
Handling Difficult Patients: Management Tools for Staff Preparedness is an exciting new training package written to help the nursing staff manage difficult patients. The package includes a 150-page book, Handling Difficult Patients: A Nurse Manager's Guide, and 25 copies of A Guide for Staff, the 32-page companion staff training handbook.
Difficult patients aren't only those that are upset, angry, or violent. The elderly often have frequent visits, and are prone to falls and memory lapses. Immigrant patients may have a language barrier. The uninsured present a facility with reimbursement issues, and the mentally ill and addicted patients can have violent tendencies.
Each patient presents the staff with a unique set of issues. This training package is the tool you and your staff need to understand these patient issues and learn how to handle them.
Take a look inside your training package
Handling Difficult Patients: A Nurse Manager's Guide is a practical guide for nurse managers that will help them train staff to deal effectively with patient populations that typically put additional strain on health care organizations. Readers learn proven strategies and examine best practices that show how to prevent patients from becoming difficult and deal with those who do. This book also provides:
- verbal and nonverbal techniques for de-escalating anger and preventing difficult patients from becoming violent toward staff
- case studies from facilities that have found successful alternatives to use of restraints
- assessment tools to better identify difficult patients
- sample case management policies to help you establish procedures for efficiently guiding your most difficult populations from admission through discharge and beyond
Here is the table of contents:
- Defining Difficult Patients
- Dealing with Difficult Families
- Assessments for Difficult Patients
- Case Management for the Difficult Patient
- Risk Management for Patient Violence
- Restraints: Moving Toward a Restraint-Free Facility
- Unit-Specific Problem Areas
- Establishing Policies and Protocols
- Documenting the Difficult Patient or Family Experience
- Leading Your Staff: Management Techniques
- Evaluating Staff Performance
- Resources for Performance Improvement
A Guide for Staff is the handbook training guide that helps nursing staff understand why some patients and family members become difficult and shows staff how to deal with them. Case studies describe situations that could occur at any time. Nurses learn strategies to improve communication and customer service skills, de-escalate patient and family anger, and make use of alternatives to traditional restraints.
Meet the Authors
Richard A. Bryan, BSN, RN, CCM, is director of risk management, safety and security at Overlake Hospital Medical Center, Bellevue, WA. He has provided medical-legal, case management, risk and health-related issues consulting services to insurance companies, municipalities, governmental agencies, employers, attorneys, and health care facilities across the western United States. His health care background includes staff and management roles in medical-surgical, cardiac surgery, critical care and emergency nursing in both civilian and military settings. In addition to his duties at Overlake, he continues his active nursing practice at a rural hospital emergency department and is a commissioned officer in the United States Naval Reserve.
Linda Childers is owner of Childers Communications, a northern California-based communications firm. She holds a bachelors degree in mass communications from California State University, Hayward, and writes about health care issues for a variety of hospitals, health plans, and other health care organizations. Her articles have been published in NurseWeek, Minority Nurse, Healthplan, the San Jose Mercury News, Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times, ePregnancy, Fit Style, and the Farmers' Almanac. Before founding her own company, she was a public information officer for Kaiser Permanente, where she produced a number of publications for both Kaiser Permanente members and medical staff.
The strain that difficult patients and difficult families put on an organization's resources can trigger a host of additional problems, including reduced patient satisfaction, a higher risk of negative encounters and outcomes, and staff dissatisfaction.
Difficult patients demand more time from nursing staff. In these times of nursing shortages, no facility can afford to have one staff member spending the majority of his or her time with a difficult patient.
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