When a patient angrily calls your practice, it can be challenging for your front desk team to resolve their issues without inflaming their growing stress. What can make it even worse is using trigger phrases that escalate patient anger.
Check out five phrases you must avoid if you want to relieve patient anger rather than making it worse.
1. I Don’t Know
Your front desk team is a representative of your practice, which means they are the face of not only your back office staff, but also of the clinical providers who offer care directly to patients. Although your front desk staff shouldn’t be expected to know the answer to clinical terms or medical problems, they should always offer to help a patient rather than saying “I don’t know.” This phrase implies that the front desk staffer doesn’t care, which can cause patient anger to grow.
If your staff doesn’t know the answer to a question, it may be better to say, “I want to help you figure this out. I’m going to repeat back what you’re trying to find out and then I’ll talk to whoever I need to so I can get you an answer.”
2. Calm Down
Telling someone to calm down rarely results in lower stress — instead, it can make things worse. Instead of saying “calm down,” you can use wording that helps inspire the angry patient to take a step back or take a deep breath.
For instance, “I want to understand what you’re feeling. Please tell me what’s going on. I’d like to take notes to help you find a solution, so if you could talk slowly, that would be helpful.”
3. You Are Not Listening
If a patient isn’t listening to your front desk team explain a situation, it may be because they don’t feel like you’ve heard their entire complaint. Instead of telling them to listen to you, you must first listen to them. It may take a while to allow them to get everything off their chest, but when they do, it’s important to say, “Thank you for sharing that. I have a better idea now of why you’re calling.”
Then explain the solution that you either have or that you’re going to investigate.
4. Like I Said
You may feel like you’re repeating yourself when you’re talking to an angry patient, but that doesn’t mean you should tell them “I already told you” or “Like I said.” These can be perceived as aggressive phrases when an angry person is on the other end of the phone.
If you need to repeat something you said already, try phrasing what you told them a different way. It’s possible that the patient didn’t quite understand it the first time due to phrasing that they weren’t familiar with.
5. No One Is Here Today
Even if no one is available to answer the patient’s question, you’re better off letting them know when you’ll have a solution rather than just saying no one is around to help.
For instance, you might say, “It may take me some time to get an answer to this since I have to talk to the experts. Would it be OK if I check in with you first thing tomorrow morning to provide a solution? I want to make sure I get you the right answer so we can resolve this issue.”
Defusing angry patients can be challenging, but if you have the right tools, you can turn their anger around quickly. Let expert Merikay Hunt, MS, help during her latest online training, Proven Phone Skills to Defuse the Angriest Patient Fast. Register today!
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The post Reverse Patient Anger by Avoiding 5 Risky Phrases appeared first on Healthcare Training Leader.