Bystander Kindness: Speaking Up and Speaking Out

During a recent well child check up, I asked a quiet 6 year old about school.  With a gentle prompt from her mom, she talked to me about how she's been trying to learn to speak up for other kids.  Intrigued, I offered that this is something grown ups need to practice as well.  Nodding in agreement, she said, "Sometimes kids make bad decisions and are mean."  "Yep," I responded, joining her on the carpet to play. "And then what do you say?"

Without looking up from the kitchen toys in her lap, my sweet six year old patient said, rather matter of factly, "I go up to them and I say, Stop saying that, it's mean." 

Speaking up and Speaking Out can be acts of kindness.

Learning to Speak Up is a necessary part of parenting a child with special needs.   Too often, parents second guess themselves as they advocate for their child's health.  "Am I becoming that parent," they wonder.   You know, the parent that the staff talks about in the break room-- the demanding or pushy ones. 

Parents soon discover that building a relationship with the provider makes advocacy easier.  There is a little dance they learn, a shuffle of sorts, between wholesome friendliness and immobile assertiveness.  When the provider likes to dance and everyone agrees on the music, well, then we've got a good time.  Whether it's liturgical or artistic, or improvisational, the dance flows and people feel connected and in sync.

Unfortunately, the dance is not always so smooth.   Grown up clinicians make bad decisions and say mean things.   Often, their comments and assumptions result from a lack of proximity to the reality of the caregiver's life.

Speaking Out takes courage when you may alienate the very people whom you depend upon to care for your child's well-being.

Bystander kindness is Speaking Out for the vulnerable, voiceless or marginalized.

Bystander kindness can be using our words and actions to create increased proximity between the world of the caregiver and the world of the health care team.   Beginning with a compassionate statement creates an invitation to increase our proximity.

"I imagine it's been hard to get much sleep since Henry has been so fussy.  When was the last time you got a decent nights rest, Mrs. Clark?"

"It is so stressful to watch a child lose weight.  I imagine you must be frantic with all of her retching."

Assuming positive intent and staying curious also open the door to increased proximity and a deeper awareness of the caregiver's reality.

"Tell me a bit more about what you mean by nothing seems to be helping?"

"What is your best guess about what is going on?"

And, sometimes, let's face it,  someone needs to push re-set with an apology.

"I'm really sorry, it seems that we have gotten off on the wrong foot.   Let's try that again.  This time we are going to do our very best to listen carefully to your concerns and questions."

Anyone on the team, or in the room, can Speak Out with bystander kindness.  With a deep breath we can all be back in the dance.

"I go up to them, and I say, Stop saying that, it's mean."  Kindergarteners can be so direct.  I wish it were so easy in our adult daily lives.  I wish it were always as safe.

Bystander kindness can also be compassion after the fact.

The elevator door closes leaving a shocked young medical student in a hijab speechless and near tears.  Confronting the angry man who has just hurled a racial slur, may not be safe.  Comforting the woman takes only time and acknowledging the horror of what happened.

"Oh wow.  Are you OK?  I'm so sorry that you had to hear that.  I hope you never have to hear that ever again."

Parents tell me that people often stare or try not to stare at their children with special needs.  One mom recently told me that "the crowds part at the Farmer's Market," as they move along looking for fresh produce and warm donuts.   Is it the wheelchair, the ventilator, the oddly contorted smile on their child's face?

Bystander kindness at the Farmer's Market on any typical Saturday morning might look like casual conversation about the best booth for beets.






Jerron Hermon, pictured above, is a professional dancer with hemiplegic cerebral palsy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbA_XYPZAPA

The Legacy of Kindness

Health care is always delivered by a team.  The more complicated the clinical condition-- the more education or training involved in our care-- the larger the team.   Even when we are alone in the room with our patient, there are people outside the room who are arranging for labs and referrals, preparing a room for the next patient, answering the phone, giving shots or drawing blood, and most certainly there are people seeing to the details of insurance coverage, billing and collections.   Clear communication and efficient coordination across care teams are always a challenge. 

Some of the children I care for have 20 or more active participants on their team.  And the teams extend well beyond the walls of our clinics and hospitals.  Consider the special education teacher who supervises a g-tube feeding for her student, or the school nurse who gives daily medications that help to control my patient’s dystonia, or involuntary drooling or seizures.   Think about the whole range of in-home services for occupational, physical and speech therapy.  Respiratory therapists work with my patients who live at home on mechanical ventilation.  Care coordinators help to organize services and appointments and transportation.  Social workers are essential for support and the application for essential benefits.  Psychologists work with behaviors and coping strategies. 

Many of my patients have as many as 8 or 10 subspecialists who guide treatment and diagnostic work-ups.  It can be a dizzying array of people and personalities, each with a unique and active role on the team.   The families who need to manage the workings of a complex care team have seemingly countless opportunities to receive kindness or encounter more struggle.

Sometimes we--as individual members of the care team-- forget or underappreciate the vastness and complexity of the team.  We may overlook the synergistic stress that accumulates for the patient and their family caregivers as they move from appointment to appointment, decision to decision, fear to more fear. A routine appointment to discuss insufficient weight gain, could very well be a moment of brutal reality for a care-giver.  Despite arduous attempts, over months or years, with many skilled providers, their beloved child is not thriving, and today is the day when the realization hits home.

The kindness required at these points is no less necessary than at other moments.  A kindness deficit, however, is going to be glaring and memorable.

Kindness in the face of synergistic, cumulative care-giver stress can be as simple as a moment of silence.  Sitting quietly, with compassion for the emotion in the room, is a way to practice kindness.  Allowing for the care-giver to ask the same question over and over, as they try to take in what is being said, is another way to communicate kindness.  Stating clearly that we are not going to abandon the patient and their care-givers, when we have exhausted all currently available therapies, is perhaps the ultimate kindness.

When my wife is the attending physician on an in-patient care team, she meets with the medical students first.  She outlines her expectations for their successful and active participation on the team. Among her expectations are that they model kindness and compassion in two concrete ways.  First, they must include one descriptor that humanizes the patient.  “Mrs. X is a 32 year old English professor whose specialty is Dickens.  She is being admitted for.. . .”  “Mr. Y is an 82 year old grandfather of 12 who is very concerned about his dog Rex.  He is being admitted for . . . .”

The second required practice of kindness for medical students on my wife’s team is to be sure that the patient is put back together before the team leaves the room, and to ask the patient directly if there is anything more the team can do for them before they leave.  The student is responsible to model for the team these simple acts of kindness.  “Mrs. X, can I help you get your gown tied?  Here, let me get your tray table back in front of you so you can finish your breakfast.”  As the team prepares to leave the room, the student is expected to step up and ask, “Mr. Y, is there anything else we can do for you before we leave?”

My wife says that invariably the patients and their families are grateful, often returning the offering of kindness with their blessings for the team and their day.  “No, I don’t think I need anything else right now, but thank you for asking.  And you all have a blessed day.”

 There is, quite often, a ripple effect from the student’s kindnesses, as residents also begin their introductions with a humanizing adjective or clause.  In fact, there have been teams who get a little competitive to see who can discover the most insightful patient descriptor.  “Mrs. Z is an 88 year-old former Army nurse, who met her husband on a hospital ship during WWII.  She is being admitted . .”

Students remember these experiences of kindness.  Certainly, their offerings of kindness humanize the patients, who will ask for the student by name even after the student has moved on to another rotation.  The acts of kindness and consideration also humanize the students as future doctors.  The practice of kindness allows the student to build deeper trust and connection with their patients.  The complexity of the patient’s illness or disability is set in the legacy of a life, and encountered as another human being with whom they have a unique and privileged relationship.   Offering kindness has its own profound legacy.

Anticipatory Kindness

As a child growing up in Northeast Ohio, going to Cleveland was a really big deal.  It meant driving along the Shoreway which was the one East-West highway with 6 lanes, 3 in each direction. My mother hated the merging traffic and the dire threat of getting lost Downtown.  So we did not go to Cleveland often, and it was a special occasion filled with excitement and intrigue, when we did.  Lucky for me, the Indians played ball on our side of town.  We also made it to the West Side Market twice a year, at Thanksgiving and Christmas, to shop for clementines, sour lemon drops, bulk nuts and chicken hearts.  

When my mother called to say that Dad was being referred to the Cleveland Clinic, I was already a young doctor in training.  He would need to see the cardiac surgeon for possible bi-pass surgery.   My mother never asked me to come home, but I did.  I knew she would need support, and a driver to get to and from Cleveland.

Dad’s dementia had become more apparent and his mobility was shaky at best.  Both of my parents perseverated about what the doctors were going to say and what was sure to happen.  My father, God rest his soul, was the ultimate pessimist, and mom the fatalistic denier.  The drive to Cleveland seemed the least of our worries, but my dutiful mother spread a giant map across the dining room table to plot our course.  I love maps so this was fine with me.  I was also quite grateful to discover the simple driving directions provided in the welcome packet that accompanied the letter confirming their appointment. 

I was living in Boston at the time.  I had lived and worked in metropolitan New York City, and I actually knew my way around London, but I felt like a kid again when we started off for Cleveland.   Turns out, Cleveland is pretty easy to navigate as an adult.  Still, I worried about finding our way around a vast hospital complex with parking, labs,  X-rays and multiple appointments, all potentially in different buildings.   And there would be the decision-making, the need to translate doctor-speak, and the anxiety of my parents to contend with.

Can you imagine my relief when we rolled up to the hospital entrance, and a friendly man in a bright red coat opened the passenger door, introduced himself, and suggested I allow the valet to park my car?  “Yes sir,” I said. “Thank you very much.”  When I showed the red-coated man our appointment notice and asked if he could direct us to our first stop, he smiled and said he planned to show us the way.  This friendly man in a bright red coat produced a wheelchair for my dad, and we were off through the halls of the Clinic, comforted by his jovial conversation about our drive into town.  He showed us the cafeteria along the way and before we even knew what had happened we were in a waiting area with abundant natural light, thanking our guide for his kindness.

This is what I call institutional kindness.  It is also an example of anticipatory kindness.  My guess is that nearly everyone arriving at the Cleveland Clinic is nervous or worried about something.  Offering a wee touch of kindness, let’s say in the form of a jovial man in a bright red jacket, is bound to improve the overall patient experience.  Kindness helps to put us at ease, and allows us to be less anxious, maybe even a bit more open and focused on the decision-making that lies ahead.  The institutional kindness offered that morning at the Clinic worked for me, and has remained an indelible, positive memory of health care.

Anticipatory kindness is akin to what we call anticipatory guidance in pediatrics.   When parents bring their children to me, they expect to talk about the child’s growth and development.  They look to me to help them interpret the child’s behaviors, and forecast what is to come. We talk about sleep, and tantrums, and separation anxiety, dietary preferences and teenage autonomy BEFORE they have become a problem.  I try to anticipate their needs, while guiding a path forward. 

So too, our challenge is to anticipate the need for kindness.  The Cleveland Clinic has chosen to post friendly folks in bright red coats at the entrance to their hospital, to serve as literal guides and certainly as ambassadors of kindness.  At the University of Virginia, the lobby is newly decorated with giant murals of inclusion and welcome. Therapy dogs visit the units and rest near the cafeteria.  Quite often I hear someone playing the grand piano in the main lobby, next to the surgical waiting area.  It's all a great start toward offering institutional, and anticipatory kindness.  

My wife had a terrific idea to increase the hospitality felt by patients in her clinic.  What if we replaced all the little signs requesting payment at the time of service, with brightly colored signs welcoming our patients like honored guests?

What if we anticipated the need for kindness at every step through the maze of our health care systems?  I suspect we might stumble over all manner of ways to offer kindness, creating increased ease among our patients, staff and visitors.  I imagine we would see positive changes in job satisfaction, patient satisfaction, and patient-doctor communication if everyone’s heart were just a little more open.

Jim

The Necessity of Kindness

At a recent meeting of the American Academy of Cerebral Palsy and Developmental Medicine, Donna Thomson gave a keynote address, reflecting on her own experience as a caregiver for her son who is now a young adult.  Speaking before several hundred health care professionals and researchers, she told the story of raising Nick, who has severe CP and is medically complex.  Nick, who is almost completely dependent on caregivers, has required repeated, often lengthy hospitalizations throughout his life.  In her remarks, Donna described the stress of 24/7 care taking, the pressure of repeated decision-making without clear best options, the necessity of being an ardent advocate without alienating those who have the power to effect the fragile balance of day-to-day caregiving, and the ironies of living in developed societies with abundant resources that are not fairly distributed to people with disabilities.  Donna was preaching to the choir that day, since all of us in the audience work with children like Nick.

So, it caught me up short when Donna finished her remarks with a story about a recent hospital admission.  As I remember it, Nick had been suffering in terrible pain from chronic, disabling complications of his CP.   The family and the medical team had tried everything they knew to provide a bit of comfort, to no avail, and everyone was completely exhausted, emotionally and physically.  The only option, after weeks of sleepless nights, and constant agony, was to return to the hospital for another procedure that had no guarantee of success.  Even getting Nick to the hospital was excruciating, so when he was finally settled and the nurse asked Donna if there was anything she needed, I was not truly prepared for her response.  Nick's admission, after all, was a routine occurrence for many of us in the room.  Donna looked out into the audience and she said to us that what she most needed at that moment, and what parents like her most often need beyond medical expertise, and clear communication, and an ethical distribution of resources, was kindness.  "Right then, I just needed a little kindness." I remember that she offered this quietly, with a slight nod, and a well placed pause for all of us to catch a collective breath.

Not sympathy.  Certainly not pity.  And not another mini-lecture about the risks and limited benefits of the upcoming procedure.  Parents in Donna's shoes need kindness on a routine basis, in any form, from anyone who cares to offer it.


Donna Thomson writes in her book, The Four Walls of my Freedom: Lessons I've Learned from a Life of Caregiving, "The wellbeing of children and their parents is so deeply interconnected that usually parents cannot separate the two.  Certainly, I couldn't...  When a mother experiences a quality of love that is desperate and feels hopelessly inadequate at times to meet her child's needs, her sense of wellbeing is very poor."  What parent has not felt that desperate love and inadequacy in some way, at some point in their parenting.  Imagine the additional impact when your child lives on the edge of mortality, or chronic pain, or physical and emotional decline.   Imagine the impact, likewise, of a simple act of kindness.

I have been thinking about the impact and necessity of kindness in health care.  Since being awakened by Donna's truth-telling, I have tried to be more intentional about offering kindness and practicing kindness with my patients.  I have sought out opportunities to teach kindness to students, and looked for ways to offer kindnesses in my day-to-day life.  What I am learning is that kindness is most often met with gratitude and returned kindness.

I left the lecture hall after Donna's keynote and knew that I had heard the truth told by someone who had the courage and humility and wisdom to speak authentically from her own experience.  I left the annual meeting with a renewed commitment toward offering kindness.  Now, via this blog, I hope to post stories, and musings, that reflect and inspire kindness and consideration.   Call it my offering of kindness.

Jim