How to deal with a crying patient? A study from a primary care setting in Croatia, using the ‘critical incident technique’

Abstract

Background: Expression of strong emotions by patients is not a rare event in medical practice, however, there are few studies describing general practitioner (GP) communication with a crying patient. Objective: The aim of this study was to describe GP behaviour with a patient who cries in a family practice setting. Methods: A semi-qualitative study was conducted on 127 Croatian GP trainees, 83.5% female, and 16.5% male. The study method used was the ‘critical incident technique.’ GP trainees described their recent experience with patients who cried in front of them. Textual data were explored inductively using content analysis to generate categories and explanations. Results: All 127 (100.0%) GP trainees initially let patients cry, giving them verbal (81.9%) and/or nonverbal support (25.9%). GP trainees (69.3%) encouraged their patients to verbalize and to describe the problem. Most GP trainees (87.4%) tried to establish mutual problem understanding. Approximately half of the GP trainees (55.1%) made a joint management plan. A minor group (14.2%) tried to maintain contact with the patient by arranging follow-up appointments. The vast majority of GP trainees shared their patient's emotion of sadness (92.9%). Some GP trainees were caught unaware or unprepared for patient's crying and reacted awkwardly (4.7%), some were indifferent (3.9%) or even felt guilty (3.1%).

Conclusion: GP trainees’ patterns of communication with crying patients can be described in five steps: (a) let the patient cry; (b) verbalization of emotions and facilitation to express the problem; (c) mutual understanding and solution finding; (d) evaluation—maintaining contact; and (e) personal experience of great emotional effort.

Key words::

• Family practice
• communication
• crying patients

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the contribution of Dr Patricia Owens (Clinical Skills Resource Centre, University of Liverpool) for her invaluable help in reviewing the text. The authors also appreciate the collaboration of the GP trainees who were ready to share their professional experience without which this study could not have been carried out.

Declaration

Funding: all participants participated voluntarily in this study.

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.