I've been thinking of ways to help explain different topics and rationales to patients. I like to use metaphors or analogies to help create a picture for my patient.
For example, when teaching about how hypertension can lead to renal failure, I might say,
"Think of the tiny blood vessels in your kidneys as the delicate strands of silk in a beautiful scarf. If you washed that scarf gently under a low-pressure faucet, it would last a long time. This is like the gentle movement of blood with a healthy blood pressure. But if you washed that delicate scarf with a fire hose, the tiny threads would be damaged over time and the scarf would be ruined. This is like the forceful movement of blood through the vessels in someone with high blood pressure. Your kidneys have a lot of tiny, delicate vessels and if they get damaged, the kidney will no longer work properly".
I would love to read some of the metaphors that you all use in patient teaching. I'm especially interested in analogies of metaphors for difficult topics. Thank you for anything you share! :-)
Specializes in Hospice, Palliative Care, Public Health.
When explaining how when Morphine sulfate liquid and ativan are used together they potentiate each other, I explain in 2 ways - I talk about how 1+1=3 (because they both work better). Then, particularly when the kids of my hospice patients are in the baby boomer cohort I will equate the meds to John Lennon and Paul McCartney. When taken as individuals, both are talented musicians. When combined, they became the Beatles. Highly effective!
Patient's first instinct when faced with an incentive spirometer is to breathe hard into the spirometer.
I tell my patients to take a deep drag like you are smoking a cigarette. Most people get that. The IS kind of does look like a bong, now that I think about it.
I am so totally going to use "like taking a deep drag from a bong" as an analogy the next time I teach a pt to use an incentive spirometer.
Concussion: Your brain is like an old switchboard with all the wires. When you get your head bonked, it knocks all the wires out and your body tries to replace them. It gets a few wrong and thats why you feel like crap.
Yesteryday, I was teaching a 93 year old woman how to use an IS. My guess is that she would genuinely not know what I was talking about.
93 year olds were once young. Bongs have been around since the days of the Ming Dynasty. There are some old ladies out there who were once hippies/pot heads.
Specializes in Medsurg/ICU, Mental Health, Home Health.
Pedi nurse here. Have had to participate in difficult conversations explaining to a child that he/she has cancer more times than I can count. Our Child Life Specialist used to equate having a tumor in one's brain to having a rock in one's shoe when explaining this to young children. It worked- they understood that they couldn't do what they wanted with a rock in their shoe so they needed to get it out so it made sense to them that the surgeon needed to go in and take out the rock that was in their heads.
I don't work with peds...but I think that is a great analogy! Child life specialists are amazing.
brighella
91 Posts
When explaining how when Morphine sulfate liquid and ativan are used together they potentiate each other, I explain in 2 ways - I talk about how 1+1=3 (because they both work better). Then, particularly when the kids of my hospice patients are in the baby boomer cohort I will equate the meds to John Lennon and Paul McCartney. When taken as individuals, both are talented musicians. When combined, they became the Beatles. Highly effective!