The Difficult Patient: Patient Engagement Strategies to Build Trust

Course overview

Health clinicians encounter a wide array of patients on a daily basis. While most of them handle these encounters professionally, there will certainly be moments of challenging patient encounters. Patients might express frustration, fear, or anger towards the health team. There are ways for clinicians to manage difficult patient behaviors that can improve the patient-clinician interaction, promote engagement, and ensure that a high quality of care is provided. Proper and safe boundaries need to be established and a patient's anger that escalates to be threatening or abusive should never be tolerated.