Empowering Patients

Transcript

• Box 1, Dr. Rianne: I have trouble keeping my patients compliant with their maintenance medication.
• Box 1, B: Well…
• Box 2, B: … I like to empower my patients! They’ll be more compliant if they feel like it was their idea all along!
• Box 3, Dr. Rianne: Golly, what do we do about your hypertension?
• Box 3, Golly: Uuh… take some pills?
• Box 4, Dr. Rianne: Wow! Great idea! I wish I thought of that! You rock!
• Box 4, Golly: Are you really a doctor?

Vocabulary

• Compliant (adj.) /k?m?pl??.?nt/ (Formal) willing to do what other people want you to do. (Verb form: to comply with sth)
• Maintenance (n.) /?me?n.t?.n?ns/ the work that is done to keep something in good condition
• Medication (n.) /?med??ke???n/ medicine that is used to treat an illness
• To empower (v.) /?m?pa??r/ to give someone the confidence, skills, freedom, etc to do something
• Hypertension (n.) /?ha?.p??ten.??n/ a medical condition in which your blood pressure is extremely high
• Sb/sth rocks (idiom) used to show that you like or approve of someone or something a lot

Context

• Here, Dr. Rianne’s friend suggests a strategy so that her patients take more regularly their medicine: make them believe that taking the medicine was their idea. So, she tries it with Golly. However, the way she does it makes Golly think that she is not really a doctor if she couldn’t have even though of that to treat him.

Language Feature

• Notice the last sentences said by Dr. Rianne: “Wow! Great idea! I wish I thought of that! You rock!” All these expressions can be used to praise someone.

From

• https://www.comicsenglish.com/comics/empowering-patients
• http://www.callouscomics.com/index/23-september-2013