This piece was originally published on April 18, 2013. Click here for original post.
One of the roles of leadership in a field is being comfortable speaking on behalf of the field. To do that, it helps to have a clear summary that is understandable to someone outside the field. One name for that summary is an “elevator speech. It is called that because it designates what a person could say to another person while making conversation riding together a few floors in an elevator.
I had an opportunity to try out my skills at the elevator speech for integrated primary care not long ago on an airplane. I was seated next to a gentleman for a couple of hours but we didn’t start to speak until the last 10 minutes of the flight. He was a guy who has to fly a fair amount because he has several small businesses. The businesses were quite varied. He was clearly a self-made guy who was doing OK but was not extremely successful, an entrepreneur on a comparatively small scale. He knew about doing everything his own way and he made his own decisions. It was not in an elevator, but we were changing elevation and the length was only slightly longer that a 15 floor ride in a high rise. This is not verbatim, but close, and the last line is a quote.
The conversation went something like this:
Bob: So, do you come to San Diego on business or pleasure?
Sandy: Business, I’m here for a conference on integrating mental health into primary care.
Bob: What’s the advantage of doing that?
Sandy: It’s the best way to improve the health of the people who come to Primary Care. Primary care is where people bring all the problems that they don’t know what to do about. A lot of times those problems, even the problems that are clearly physical, are related to the fact that they don’t take care of themselves. They are depressed or they are anxious, or they drink too much, or they don’t eat right, or don’t take their medicine, so they feel bad, so they hurt.
Sandy: When people are hurting it tends to make them more anxious or more depressed, or they drink more, or exercise less. If the doctor says he/she can take care of the part that hurts but they are going to send them to a mental health service or a substance abuse service for their anxiety, or depression, or drinking, a majority of the people don’t go. For them it doesn’t feel like two separate things. It feels like one thing. It’s only when you bring a person who can deal with anxiety and depression and alcohol use problems into the primary care and put them on a team with a doctor that the patient feels like he/she can get their whole situation cared for. It even costs less because if the person doesn’t get the whole situation dealt with effectively, they tend to go other places like emergency rooms to try and get enough care to relieve their various pains.
Bob:I’m trying to imagine what that would be like in the doctor’s office. How would it work?
Sandy: Well, if you came because you had a pain or because it was time for your physical, the doctor might talk to you about how your life was going or give you a screening test that would take about 5 minutes. The test would help pick up if you were having troubles with depression or anxiety or drinking. And if any of those seemed to be a part of the situation that you’re bringing, the doctor might call in a psychologist or a clinical social worker or some other person that they would probably call a behavioral specialist. The doc might introduce you to the behavioral specialist and go see another patient or two while the both of you talked.
Sandy: Just like primary care doctors take care of everyday kinds of problems after they make sure it’s nothing that’s going to kill you, behavioral specialist would probably do the same. He/she would ask you a couple of questions to be sure that you weren’t in a very serious or dangerous situation but then they would focus on getting you better as quickly as possible. They might work with you to find something that you like to do everyday, which actually has been shown to start improvement for people with depression, orthey might teach you some breathing exercises that actually make a difference with people with anxiety. When the doctor came back in the behavioral specialist might make a recommendation to the doctor about whether the doctor might consider prescribing you some medicine. You might come back to see the behavioral specialist a time or two to be sure that things are heading in the right direction. But in the long run you just go back to working with your doctor and the behavioral specialist would be somebody who would be available if you ever needed them again.
Bob:That sounds terrific, sign me up!
| Alexander Blount is Director of the Center for Integrated Primary Care and Professor of Family Medicine and Psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, MA. His books include Integrated Primary Care: The Future of Medical and Mental Health Collaboration and Knowledge Acquisition, written with James Brule’. He is Past President of the Collaborative Family Healthcare Association, a national multidisciplinary organization promoting the inclusion of mental health services in medical settings and he is past-Editor of Families, Systems and Health. |
