As an ever-increasing number of Americans turn towards the integrative medical model, it falls upon us as practitioners of Traditional Chinese/East Asian Medicine to enable our patients to communicate successfully and confidently with their other health care providers about our medicine and how it can complement and enhance patient outcomes.
Although, we as medical providers should be doing the majority of education and outreach to other health care practitioners, it is a fact that our mutual patients often serve as a liaison between our offices. By then enabling our patients to speak confidently to their other health care providers about our medicine and what goes on "behind the curtain," we benefit not only our patients but also our profession as a whole.
Having The Right Mentality
It bears reminding before any discussion of successful communication that there should never be an "us vs. them" mentality. Any successful integrative medical model must inherently run on the assumption that the ultimate goal is the patient's well-being and health and therefore we should always strive to maintain open channels of communication. We should never speak negatively about other practitioners or exhibit bias or negative attitudes towards other health care systems—these types of attitudes may only alienate patients and other providers and serve to only divide rather than unite towards a common goal.
Even when disagreements occur (as may certainly happen from time to time), it is important to approach them with professional, neutral, and measured tone—maintaining an attitude of respect for all health care practitioners involved in the patient's health is essential in ensuring good working relations.
The Patient is in Charge
The first step in ensuring successful communication is to remind the patient that they are in fact in charge of their own health care goals and treatment plans. If they want to seek out so called "alternative" care, that is well within their rights to do so. Oftentimes patients may be hesitant to tell their health care providers that they are receiving acupuncture or taking Chinese herbs. This is not only disingenuous but can be dangerous, so it is important to instill confidence in your patients so that they feel comfortable informing their physicians that they are under the care of a licensed acupuncturist.
By reminding your patients that they are in charge of their health care decisions and helping them to craft what their goals of care might look like, they can then confidently inform the other members of their health care team who else is involved in their care.
You should also make sure your patients know what your training and education entails so if they need to, they may then share with their physician that you are the recipient of multiple years of post-graduate education in your field, have passed numerous board exams, maintain state licensure, and follow requirements for continuing education. This often allays concerns about safety and training by allowing other medical practitioners to become aware of the depth and breadth of your education, reducing the fear of their patient seeing an unlicensed or unregulated practitioner.
An Understanding of Their Treatment Plan
The second step in helping to ensure successful communication between our patients and their other health care providers is to make sure that our patients have a basic fluency in what their treatment plan entails. This means that we must be able to explain to our patients what their Traditional Chinese Medicine/East Asian Medicine diagnosis and treatment plan may look like.
This task is often not an easy one; we must find a way to easily explain to patients what it is that we are treating them for in terms of our own diagnostic paradigm in phrases that they can easily relate to the other members of their medical team. In general, it can be easiest to explain these things to patients in terms of symptoms—by explaining to them what symptoms you are addressing and in what order you are addressing these concerns, you can provide a way for your patients to keep their other health care providers informed of your treatment goals without needing to overwhelm them with discipline-specific terminology or expecting your patients to explain the nuances of root and branch theory or other such treatment principles.
For instance, instead of explaining to a patient that we are treating them for qi and blood stagnation that is causing back pain (which would then necessitate explaining qi, blood, acupuncture channels, etc.), we would want the patient to be able to understand that we are working with the body's natural pain modulating systems both locally and within the nervous system to decrease their pain and improve their functionality.
This is a quick and easy explanation that patients can then relay to their physicians about the mechanisms of acupuncture and directly explain how it benefits their chief complaint(s). Without drilling them on what you have explained to them, ensure that your patient can explain back to you what you have discussed with them about their treatment plan, this ensures that they have truly understood what you have communicated to them.
Open Channels of Communication
The third step in allowing for successful communicating is to enable open channels of communication to develop and flourish. This means allowing the other health providers to reach out to you if questions or concerns arise and to reassure your patients that you are a receptive audience to those types of questions. This assures your patients that you are a willing partner in a multi-disciplinary team and goes a long way in making them feel that you are an active and willing participant in a dynamic and integrative care team.
You are the subject matter expert in your field so it behooves you to be a receptive audience to answer questions and concerns those unfamiliar with acupuncture or TCM might have to prevent any misunderstandings or misconceptions from arising. This means making sure that you send your patient out with multiple copies of your contact information so that they can share this information with other pertinent health care providers as needed. It also means inquiring and obtaining from your patient informed consent to confer with other relevant providers to share needed health care data from the onset of treatment. By establishing yourself as an informed member of the health care team, you set the stage for successful communication with other providers.
While our goal is always to be the leaders in communication and to be the ones who lead the way in reaching out to other medical providers, the matter of convenience in having patients serve as liaisons between provider offices means that we must learn to enable our patients to assist us in serving the higher purpose of successful collaboration. By employing these strategies, we can assist our patients to become more confident participants in their health care while also ensuring that we position ourselves as open and willing participants in the field of integrative medicine.
Sarah Poulin is a licensed acupuncturist and Chinese herbalist with a private practice in Middlebury, Connecticut. She is an alumna of Pacific College of Oriental Medicine, where she received both her Master's of Science in Traditional Oriental Medicine (in 2012) and her Doctorate of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine (in 2016). For more information please visit her website at sarahpoulinlac.com.