Advice for Managing Emotions Around AML
How can AML patients and care partners cope with their emotions? Dr. Eric Winer advises taking it day by day and emphasizes the importance of open communication, involving care partners, and utilizing additional healthcare team members such as mental health professionals and social workers.
Related Resources:
Distinguishing AML Symptoms and Side Effects | Why Communication Is Essential |
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Expert Perspective | The Value of Empowering AML Patients and Care Partners |
Transcript:
Katherine Banwell:
How do you counsel patients on coping with the emotional side of AML? What advice and resources are available?
Dr. Eric Winer:
The advice I tell people is this is a journey. This is not a one-day process. My advice is we really need to take this on a day-by-day basis. Don’t think about what’s going to happen three months from now. Let’s work on going step by step, day by day. That is one of the easier things for me to say and a harder thing for a patient to do. But I think that giving that roadmap makes it easier and empowers them to understand what their next steps are going to be in this entire process.
Sometimes if we need to, we can have psychiatry involved. Sometimes we can have social work involved. Some patients even ask for medications in order to help with that, and we have those medications. That’s why it’s so important to have that communication so that we can help with things that are bothering the patient that may not be just related to the disease itself.
Katherine Banwell:
Why is the role of a care partner, a friend, or family member, so important? How can they help?
Dr. Eric Winer:
There is something to be said about having a familiar person go through a difficult process with a patient. I spend a tremendous amount of time with my patients, but I don’t have a history that dates back many years. Although I do end up having that at some point, in the beginning that’s not what we have.
It’s important, while I’m getting to know the patient, to have somebody who does know the patient, that knows the patient’s way of looking at things, their ins and outs of how they see the work, and how they’re going to react to different aspects of their care. Having somebody like that around is extraordinarily important from a patient comfort standpoint, but also from a practitioner standpoint. It’s good to have another person there, but the other reason I think that gets a little bit underrated is in those initial assessments, in those first days where we’re sitting down and talking to the patient, and saying, hey, here’s what’s happening. Here’s what’s going on. It’s really hard to sit down and listen and get a full understanding in one shot. We don’t try to do it in one shot.
We try to be available, but having a second or third or fourth set of ears is very important, because an hour later the patient may say wait a minute, what did that mean? Why didn’t we ask that? And having somebody else there at that moment to say, oh, we did ask that. Here’s what we talked about. This is what we said. Having that second set of ears in a time where it’s overwhelming is really very helpful to the patient.
