When a Patient Leaves Your Care, How Do You Want Them to Feel?

Abstract

Peacefulness is a potentially healing inner state that can be fostered by skilled interpersonal interactions. Skilled interactions in health care are those in which clinicians focus on making patients feel seen and heard and that their needs are important and can be met. But data collected in health care encounters tend to place value on consumerism and commodification, both of which undermine clinicians' capacities to skillfully interact with patients in ways that support patients feeling comfortable, if not peaceful. Motivating peace for patients means shifting patterns of how some data are valued relative to other data; this article suggests data measures that can facilitate a shift toward clinical encounters with more capacity for more peaceful interactions.