Families rely on health advocates to help them communicate with their care teams and find local resources. There are many ways to support a family as a health advocate. It is important to build rapport with the family you are supporting to best assist them. Rapport can't grow without face-to-face interaction to create a shared experience. Shared experience can be as simple as bringing the caregiver a coffee if they are still in the hospital.
If a family shares a need, ensure you are sending them accurate, and up to date information. You should be contacting a resource directly first to determine that it is an active resource and wether it will be a beneficial resource for the family. Also, consider the distance of a resource. If the resource is out of reach for the family, then it would not be beneficial to send them the information.
Communication
Ensuring caregiver understanding is crucial for the patient's well-being. Here are some strategies:
- Clear communication: use plain language and simplify information, avoid medical jargon
- Stay curious when speaking with a family and let them educate you. Ask if they have worked with a case manager, a LCSW or a patient navigator before. This will give you a better snapshot of what resources or options caregivers have explored.
- Provide gentle reminders and thorough explanations (Reference their surveys or reiterate why we are here to support if reaching a hard stop)
- Ask open-ended questions: Encourage questions to clarify doubts.
- Use visual aids and Written Resources: diagrams, charts, videos, printouts
- Repeat and recap: Reinforce important points
- Teach-back method: Have caregivers explain the information in their own words to assess comprehension.
- Cultural sensitivity: Respect cultural differences and preferences for effective communication.
- Thoroughly explain the program and why we are doing it.
Best Practices
Ensuring you are acting as a responsible health advocate is crucial for patient's well being. Here are some strategies:
- Use stregnth-based model (Highlight stregnths- This empowers a family. Asside from the negative/issues it is important to highlight the good things. It gives families something to hold onto.)
- Practice within your scope and know your boundaries (Make sure families know that you are not in a medical/clinical position.)
- Loop in LCSW with topics that are out of your scope in a non-dismissive way (example: trouble coping, etc.)
- Document all communications or actions taking immediately.
- Famalies could take things personally (acknowledge this and do not assume that they have entirely receievd the information)
Guides:
Support Groups
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet ex labore vivendo laboramus has.
Caregiver FB group
- Lorem Ipsum