One of the most powerful things a patient said to me was "Just because I hear you doesn't mean I understand what you're saying". His regimen was changing because he had some resistance and I was doing the nurse education part of the visit right before discharge when we reiterate what the doctor has said and ask if there are questions. After having discharged patients a hundred gazillion times, I could tell by the look on his face that something wasn't clicking. His response also resonated with me because I could remember leaving appointments with doctors early in my diagnosis and scouring the internet to make sense of some of the things I was told because I didn't have a nurse to follow up and explain what I missed, or to get my doctor back in for five more minutes to help it click.
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