Recognizing Emotion

By: John Ragsdale, MD, MS, assistant professor, Division of Hospital Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Kentucky College of Medicine You can learn a lot just by observing. As clinicians, we frequently diagnose and assess just by paying careful attention to our patients. We see the signs of impending respiratory failure in the patient with asthma who’s not improving. We note subtle signs of developing encephalopathy in the patient with cirrhosis. We learn to differentiate the critically ill patients from the stable ones. In some way, this is all part of the physical examination, and we hone these skills with experience. But when we’re first learning these skills, we need someone to teach us to see as a clinician sees, to know which details to focus on and how to put those in context. This is also true in learning to recognize emotion in our patients. We must be taught to see the subtle signs of emotion, to recognize the facial expression details that suggest the “emotional diagnosis.” Interpreting facial expressions is a physical examination skill much like recognizing the signs of a stroke or a thyroid disorder. This is why my co-authors and I began to study this skill (described in our recent Academic Medicine article) and chose to teach it, first as faculty development to other educators and later to other faculty, residents, and students. We believe the skills are applicable in practice and present an opportunity to provide better, more humanistic ca...
Source: Academic Medicine Blog - Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: Tags: Featured Guest Perspective emotional diagnosis facial expressions patient centered care physical exam Source Type: blogs