SEMINAR TRAINING FOR CONTRACEPTIVE CARE – THE SEMINAR-2
If doctors are to offer help they must be able to listen to, and empathize with, the feelings of their patients. Most doctors have built up some form of protective emotional shell to defend themselves from the pain and suffering that they have had to witness during their time as students and hospital doctors. Some such shell is necessary for their personal survival, but if there is no opportunity for them to allow themselves to recognize their feelings, they will be poor whole-person doctors.
The use of a consultation model can be a way of encouraging doctors to think about what is going on in the consultation. Seminar training extends that process. The act of telling the story of the patient and the troubles, in as far as they can be remembered, and expressing his or her own reactions to that story, helps the doctor to ‘acquire a measure of psychological distance from the engagement of himself and his patient together in treatment’ (Gosling, Miller, Woodhouse et al., 1967). Such engagement, referred to as the doctor/patient relationship, is the focus for the work of the group. The seminar experience encourages the doctor to let himself or herself feel, then pull back and think about those feelings. If the feelings are truly experienced, thinking stops momentarily; conversely, it is difficult to feel deeply when thinking. The process is one of constant change between these two positions as the act of pulling back to think can allow more feeling to follow, and as more is felt there is more to think about.
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