Dealing with Upset Patients and Staff
Hiring for retention requires planning and careful execution.
It happens every day: an upset patient. Perhaps an upset employee.
In the world of the service-oriented business, such as healthcare or restaurants, our job is caring for others. And they bring us their big feelings sometimes. After all healthcare, for example, can be an emotional experience for many reasons.
Sometimes these patients or staff even accuse us of discrimination or somehow intentionally making their day worse. So many in healthcare just want to help and being accused of bad intentions doesn't help.
So how can you calm down an angry patient?
Calming Down Upset People - The LEAP Method
I have delivered many many training sessions on customer service and the method I teach related to patient complaints is the LEAP process. It stands for
Listen
Empathize
Apologize
Problem Solve
Let’s break down each element of LEAP and how it works.
Listen
You’ve got to let the person express their thoughts without interruption. In this step, I recommend trying to ferret out the exact behavior that led to the upset feelings. This can include asking things like
“Can you tell me what exactly happened?”
“What happened next?”
“Was anyone else around to hear/see this?”
Part of the reason for this is to establish the exact details of what happened and to also hopefully get them to realize that they may not have all of the facts (which may or may not happen). It also helps to separate and clarify what truly happened versus what they think happened.
When people are upset and they don’t feel heard, then the chances of them ever feeling good about your business are slim. You’ve got to hear them out, or someone else will end up hearing them out.
Empathize
Next, we gave to find a way to show empathy. Maybe say "I can see that you are upset and I hate that our actions were the cause of that. We would never want anyone to feel mistreated this way."
Notice how none of that acknowledges wrongdoing. It's a fact that being mistreated does not feel good. It’s a fact that something we did helped contribute directly to the person feeling bad. But it's not necessarily a fact that we treated someone poorly. We can acknowledge the former (it feels bad to be mistreated) without admitting the latter (we did something wrong).
This is something you HAVE to understand. If you can’t genuinely empathize with the person’s pain, you’ll never be successful in calming them down.
Apologize
I'm a believer that you can always come up with some way to own your part in a conflict. In this situation, one option might be to say
“I’m sorry that we did X”
“I’m sorry that we did not do Y”
“I’m sorry that we didn’t communicate better about this” (this is an easy one and applies in a lot of situations)
“I’m sorry that this situation happened”
It’s important to avoid the anger-inducing phrase “I’m sorry that you feel this way.” Although you might have good intents, that phrase comes off as putting the blame on the other person.
Problem Solve
This is where you work out a solution and get agreement. The important thing is showing the person that you intend to make it right somehow. There are many ways of doing this:
“We will make sure this never happens to anyone else”
“We will be sure to communicate better next time.”
“I will look into this and get back to you.”
“I can offer X to resolve the problem, would that work?”
“I can’t do Y to resolve this, but I can do Z. Would that work for you?”
The Bottom Line
The single most important thing is to notice, acknowledge, and attend to the person’s emotions. If you can do that, you’ll be 90% of the way to success.
There is a good amount of grey area between telling the patient they are totally right and on the other hand completely shutting them down and disavowing all wrongdoing. Stay in that grey area and focus on acknowledging their upset feelings and committing to doing the right thing. If you do that, you can help them feel better without explicitly admitting to their accusation.
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