Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group, LLC Blog

If You Listen Just Long Enough...

Posted by Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group on Mon, Nov 8, 2010 @ 07:11 AM

basketball resources

A college professor and mentor of mine once told me that during an injury evaluation if you listen just long enough your patient will tell you exactly what is wrong with them; and, if you listen just a little bit longer they’ll also tell you exactly what makes them better. 

No need for special tests off the start, just listen and let them talk.

It’s become too easy to interrupt our patients during an injury history, because, well, we know exactly what’s wrong with them. No need to listen to their sob story – just order the MRI, X-ray or other diagnostic test and let’s keep moving.

“A well-known study of medical education found that medical students' interpersonal skills with patients declined as their medical education progressed (Helfer, 1970).  This was particularly true for the student’s ability to take a good social history.  It seems that as students learned more about the science of medicine they found it harder simply to talk with patients, and came to devalue this kind of activity.  What were easy exchanges during the first years became an awkward and unproductive series of closed-ended, usually yes-no, questions later on.  No doubt related to this narrowing of focus, Martin et al. (1976) found that as training progressed, physicians seemed increasingly to lose their grasp on the patient's total health picture and to focus more and more on biomedical issues. 

Although the improvement of physicians' skills in interviewing is valuable, skill does not go to the heart of the matter.  Medical school needs to do a better job of inculcating different attitudes in young doctors - in defining for them what is truly important about being a doctor and what are effective, and humane, doctor-patient roles.  Our society must figure out how to influence their attitudes so that they come to value certain aspects of patient care differently.  Then, of course, when these doctors become mentors themselves, they will provide a different kind of example to their students.  If physicians saw themselves more as patient educators, medical education would be different, and the profession would engage in a different kind of self-scrutiny.  More attention would be paid to the education of patients, which would translate into more sensitive involvement of doctors in the process of healing.” (p.18-19)

Doctors Talking With Patients/Patients Talking With Doctors: Improving Communication In Medical Visits by Debra L. Roter and Judith A. Hall

The challenge then for us as health care providers is to put away the blackberry for a moment and get back to the lost art of patient talk.

Get back to real patient interaction and patient centered care – which places the patient as the center of focus and not our schedule or outside responsibilities.

Of course, ordering an x-ray just to be sure and sending the patient on their way is a lot easier then sitting down and talking with them.

Art Horne is the Coordinator of Care and Strength & Conditioning Coach for the Men’s Basketball Team at Northeastern University, Boston MA.  He can be reached at a.horne@neu.edu.


Martin, D.P., Glison, B.S., Bergner, M., Bobbitt, R.A., Pollard, W.E., Conn, J.R., & Cole, W.A. (1976).  The Sickness Impact Profile: Potential use of a health status instrument for physician training. Journal of Medical Education, 51, 942-947.
 
Helfer, R.E. (1970).  An objective comparison of the pediatric interviewing skills of freshman and senior medical students.  Pediatrics, 45, 623-627.

 

Topics: Art Horne, basketball performance, basketball resources, athletic training conference, boston hockey conference, autonomy

How well do you know your athletes?

Posted by Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group on Tue, Sep 14, 2010 @ 06:09 AM

everything basketball

“Almost all the master coaches I met followed Wooden’s rule. They wanted to know about each student so they could customize their communications to fit the larger patterns in a student’s life.”

Famed football coach and quarterback specialist, Tom Martinez, has a vivid metaphor for this process.

“The way I look at it, everybody’s life is a bowl of whipped cream and shit, and my job is to even things out,” he said. “If a kid’s got a lot of shit in his life, I’m going to stir in some whipped cream.  If a kid’s life is pure whipped cream, then I’m going to stir in some shit.”

(Excerpt from, The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle)

Looking at some of Tom's successes it's clear his recipe might just be working. 

Art Horne is the Coordinator of Care and Strength & Conditioning Coach for the Men’s Basketball Team at Northeastern University, Boston MA.  He can be reached at a.horne@neu.edu.

Topics: basketball performance, athletic training conference, Strength & Conditioning, Sports Pyschology & Mental Training, The Talent Code, Daniel Coyle, autonomy, development, Leadership

What motivates you?

Posted by Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group on Mon, Aug 30, 2010 @ 06:08 AM

motivation

A good friend from Australia sent me this clip about workplace motivation. Besides the awesome animation, it’s just under 11 minutes and worth every second of it. 

It may surprise you that monetary incentives are not the lead motivator in the workplace, but instead the three factors that lead to better performance and personal satisfaction are:

Autonomy: desire to be self directed.
Mastery: our urge to become better.
Purpose: When profit motive becomes unmoored from purpose motive bad things happen (bad customer service, crappy products, etc).

How does this change your management strategy this week?


Art Horne is the Coordinator of Care and Strength & Conditioning Coach for the Men’s Basketball Team at Northeastern University, Boston MA.  He can be reached at a.horne@neu.edu.

Topics: basketball conference, athletic training conference, athletic training, Strength & Conditioning, motivation, autonomy, purpose, mastery, Good to Great, discipline, customer service, development