Nurses and doctors at Irish hospitals should no longer call patients by pet names such as love, dear, girls, lads or boys, under new recommendations.
Staff should instead refer to patients by their first name in an effort to make treatment more “person-centred”, Ireland’s state health services provider has said.
The Health Service Executive (HSE) also instructed staff to avoid referring to patients by their bed number, diagnosis or affected body area.
The advice, issued in a report responding to a national patient experience survey, prompted some to lament the passing of “how are you feeling, love?” and other informal expressions.
Michael O’Keefe, a consultant ophthalmologist at Mater hospital in Dublin, said the recommendations were political correctness “gone mad” in the midst of an acute hospital bed shortage and soaring waiting lists for operations.
The report, published last week, said hospital staff’s communication skills could have a profound impact on healthcare outcomes and the experience of patients and their families.
Working in healthcare could lead to burnout and less compassion and empathy for patients, so it was important that staff used “person-centred” language, it said.
“Are collective names used where the person’s name would be more appropriate, do they use pet names such as dear or love, girls, boys, lads etc instead of the patients/colleagues names?
“Do we talk about ‘feeding people’ instead of assisting with meals or refer to someone coming back from theatre as ‘the hip’/the hernia/knee etc. This is a powerful exercise to help raise awareness of how depersonalising some commonly used language can be.”
The Irish Patients’ Association told BreakingNews.ie that hospitals should strike a balance and not come across as completely clinical and cold.
“Sometimes the relationship of a nurse or a doctor or other allied professions – by the way they interact with a patient in an empathetic way – can actually make their journey a little bit easier,” it said.
