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Points from Verbal First Aid workshop I attended


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The whole process is condescending and patronising. It assumes your patient is a mindless idiot. Many of your patients are smart enough to know when they are being manipulated and sold a bill of psychobabble goods. If you use these techniques, you had better not underestimate your patient or you're going to alienate him and lose his trust. Then you have nothing.

Did you and I just read the same post? What is condescending about this?

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Did you and I just read the same post?

I dunno. For clarification, I was referring specifically to the idea of mimicing body language that Anthony and Rid focused upon.

What is condescending about this?

Ever spent five minutes with a used car salesman?

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I don't know who came up with that mimic body language crap either. It never sickens me more when some one tries to do baby talk with the kiddies or rap with the teens. You're not fooling anyone. Build confidence and trust by acting your age, knowing what you're talking about, and not bein an asshole.

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I agree with Asysin and Dust.

In all the classes I have taken they emphasized not to mimic your patient, act like the educated adult you are and treat your patient with all due respect.

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Well, first off, all the book's been out for awhile. It's based off the work of a Dr. Jacobs whose book was pulled because the medical community thought it had too much medical-ortiented advice aimed at the general public. He also has a video with FF/EMTs and MDs talking about how they use the techniques in their jobs. And even that info came from the work of others. If one wanted to disseminate these ideas as widely as possible, a book only sounds logical. I also got the impression of sincerity at the lecture (but maybe she was just mimicking my body language :D )

That is what I figured.... this is not ground breaking psychological news... actually these theories hit its peak in the mid-80's as was found not to be clinically significant. Now they are trying to cash in on the private sectors for training and sales... it and CISD came out about the same time. Both now being considerd "bunk"....
You and I must be taking different psychology courses with different textbooks and journal articles. Guided imagery, hypnosis, and placebo have been gaining more support and more of a foothold in mainstream psychology in the last few years. In fact, it's now considered unethical to have a control group when studying survival rates in cancer patients who receive emotional/meditation/guided imagery therapy, because of the significantly higher death rate in the control. We have to rely on old experiments or case studies on older data or 'some therapy' versus 'more therapy'.

In all the classes I have taken they emphasized not to mimic your patient, act like the educated adult you are and treat your patient with all due respect.
It's just something to think about and consider. If the patient is huddled in a little ball crying, you probably don't want to do the same. But you take the overall concept and modify it to your needs. Instead of standing tall and calling his name, you might kneel down and speak in a softer voice with closed bodily language that slowly opens up. It's not really a new concept, rather breaking down old ideas and expanding them.

And you don't always need it to the same degree. If you have a big tough no nonsense guy with a broken femur who's handling it relatively well, you can mimic him just by taking a no nonsense attitude as well. In an authorative voice you can tell him you know that's hurting a lot so you're going to get the morphine shot ready right away while your partner stabilizes the leg. It's things I see the medics I've ridden with do to a degree already. Just expanding. Mimicking basic body language was just one of many ways to get rapport (however you do it) which is what matters.

Let's not lose sight of the overall concept.

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