The patients’ voice with Liz O’Riordan
03 July 2024 (Last updated: 3 Jul 2024 11:53)
This year’s BAOMS Annual Scientific Meeting kicks off with Dr Liz O’Riordan, speaker, storyteller and author. She will set the tone for the rest of the conference with her focus on the patient perspective and her open and honest reflections on her journey from surgeon to patient.
Liz has seen treatment from three sides, as a surgeon, as a patient and as a carer. She is a retired breast surgeon who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015. More recently she cared for her mother who had metastatic bone cancer. Her experiences as a patient spurred her into advocacy and she gives regular talks to physicians and raises awareness of what it feels like to experience care from ‘the other side’.
Liz says: “There is no benchmarking for the patient experience. We don’t get career recognition or money for it. I had never looked at a breast cancer forum or seen what questions patients were asking, because I was too busy going to conferences like this and believed that nurses were doing their bit. Once I had the perspective from the other side, I realised that the collateral damage of cancer surgery, or any surgery, is huge. Patients don't know what's normal, or where to go for help,”
She continues. “We need to do more to help patients to live and to live well. At the moment the system is not joined up and there are gaps in the support we give to patients. We often do not ask what patients want from us and most of us do not know how to treat the side effects that they live with.”
During her lecture Liz will encourage the audience to truly consider patients while treating them. This includes considering the whole pathway from diagnosis to post-surgery. While surgeons may not have all the information or answers, it is crucial that across the team there are resources to give to patients. These could be leaflets or digital, and through discussions with a patient or family, the relevant pages can be signposted rather than simply leaving the patient to search for information themselves.
She also encourages clinicians to get comfortable having uncomfortable discussions about patients’ intimate lives so they are able to signpost reliable information should they have questions or need support with sex or intimacy post surgery.
Other potentially difficult areas to be addressed are around death, wills and power of attorney as well as signs of a recurrence of a cancer in the future. She explains: “We should be comfortable addressing the elephant in the room and encouraging patients to do the same. If we cannot provide information then patients will seek it out online and these sources are not always reliable.”
Above all, Liz will challenge the audience at the BAOMS conference to consider whether they really know how to treat the mental and physical side effects of surgery. Have they considered anxiety around recurrence, mental health support for depression? She believes patients should be told more about what to expect and when and where to go for help.
She concludes: “If you're uncomfortable, get over yourself. Find out where to signpost information or resources for patients. Put yourself in their shoes and make sure they get the best support using the right language to make sure they get everything they need.”
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