Should technologists tell everything they know?

Abstract

Students and staff technologists used to be taught to give no information to patients, an easy stance but hardly justifiable. Today's technologists are professional practicing in advanced settings; today's patients want and often demand information. How do we ensure that the pendulum of providing healthcare information does not swing from telling patients nothing to telling patients everything? Only recently have patient-care texts begun to recognize this as a dilemma, with the unanswered question remaining: how much do we tell them when they ask? The desire to look like an expert may lead technologists, particularly those who are newly graduated and enthusiastic, into providing information to a patient before evaluating its appropriateness. Technologists working with anxious or worried patients may also give out information to ease both their own and the patient's feelings of anxiety. Many patients are really looking for reasonable reassurance about their tests and illness, not detailed information. There are three types of technologists: the revealer, the hider and the expert. The latter has learned to evaluate information for its appropriateness for patients to hear and their ability to receive it. As part of the ongoing learning process, technologists need to consider how to evaluate a patient's motive for asking a question, to decide the answer's effect on the patient, determining who is the most appropriate person to answer the question, and finally, judging how much information is best for the patient to hear. For the most apprehensive patient, distraction may be a useful technique.