Misconceptions about Patient Care –> Too many cooks in the kitchen?
Patient care year in and year out proves to be a difficult concept for students to grasp. No, not the semantics of the word, as students recognize that caring for a patient is part in parcel of the job of a radiation therapist. However, it is how they go about managing a patient, both physically and therefore mentally that proves difficult. In radiation therapy, patients can encounter side effects during the course of treatment. It is incumbent on the students to recognize the side effect and provide the appropriate management strategies. Students do not do this triage and assessment alone, however we are looking to prepare students for their eventual jobs so we would prefer eventually that students take the reigns and we do not have to add (and hopefully correct) information provided. There are a number of nuances to effective patient care however, so lets stick to the most problematic for students: when to refer to the doctor!
I leave doctor generalized as our patients can be seeing multiple specialized doctors for a variety of reasons. This is most definitely one of the reasons students are having difficulty with this concept: many doctors, who to send the patient to? There are too many cooks in the kitchen as it were.
In a kitchen, there are multiple individuals responsible to complete the tasks of the day. As the wonderful movie Ratatouille displays, there is a Chef, a Sous-Chef, a Saucier, and a Tournant, to name a few. Knowing what their roles is important, and each individual party helps to complete the greater task of creating Michelin star dishes for a restaurant. Just as each of these individuals has their job to do, so to do Radiation Oncologists, Medical Oncologists, Surgical Oncologists and Family Doctors to boot. If we understand what the role of each of these doctors are, then we can understand where to refer our patient as the situations calls for.
TweetExample for "Misconceptions about Patient Care –> Too many cooks in the kitchen?":
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/classictoo-many-cooks-in-the-kitchen--270567890084227472/