Page 193 - Hospital Authority Convention 2017

Parallel Sessions
Parallel Sessions

PS10.1 Working in Harmony – Happy Staff Happy Patient 13:15 Convention Hall B

The Anticipation of Errors in Patient Treatment among Medical Students
Klein J
Department of Medical Education, Melbourne Medical School, University of Melbourne, Australia HOSPITAL AUTHORITY CONVENTION 2017
While some research attention has been paid to how health professionals cope with the emotional impact of medical error,
we examine how medical students anticipate future error. Through 23 interviews with final year medical students, we explore
how errors are perceived, defined, and anticipated. We find that students are highly diverse in how they think about error, with
some being highly anxious while others expressed lower levels of worry. All students, however, had concerns about making
errors, and about the effects of errors on patients and on their own confidence, identity and career path.

PS10.2 Working in Harmony – Happy Staff Happy Patient 13:15 Convention Hall B

Conflict Resolution and Mediation with High Conflict Personalities
Yuen H
Conflict Resolution Centre, Hong Kong

Mediation Ordinance takes effect from 1 January 2013 in Hong Kong with the aim to promote the use of mediation as a
process of conflict resolution. The Ordinance describes mediation as a process whereby a mediator who is an independent
third party without judging, assists the disputants to find out the issues, develop options, facilitate communication and to
settle in whole or in part their dispute.
Since 2008, there are researches from the USA on high conflict personalities, their behaviour and symptoms which resemble
personality disorder as known to the psychological professionals. These are people who appear to be normal but would have Wednesday, 17 May
symptom of personality disorder such as borderline symptom of mood swings and bursts of uncontrollable anger, and other
symptoms such as anti-social, narcissistic, histrionic types of personalities. When these people engage in a conflict situation,
they become fixated with the dispute and would very quickly escalate to high intensity of emotions and even violence. Their
emotion would lead them to jump to a conclusion and their tunnel vision would guide them to pursue their conflict through the
court system by unending appeals.

In a hospital, there are very likely to have high conflict situations with members of families who have suffered losses and
trauma. The research finding shows that 75% of patients diagnosed with borderline personality disorder have suffered some
abandonment issue in the past history. There is now some clear evidence that when there is a loss or traumatic experience
in life, the person will suffer from grief. The grieving process will cause denial of emotions, anger or depression before the
person can fully recover from the loss by acceptance of what has happened. This experience of grief will occur in patients
as well as their family members. Therefore, people with high conflict personalities are very likely to have experience loss and
trauma in the past and have difficulty accepting the loss.

This talk will focus on how we can understand and handle these high conflict personalities and develop empathy for them.

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