23/04/2024
Hello all, sharing a recent client experience and my learnings from it. I am sharing it with the hope that all LCs reading it may also benefit from this.
Yesterday late evening, I had to do an urgent consultation. One mom called me quite stressed. She was having too much heaviness in one breast, painful and hard, slightly feverish, with literally no milk coming out even with an electric breast pump.
As it was late evening time, I knew she would not get any in-person help at that moment so I immediately did a video consultation for her. It went on for more than an hour. I told her simple steps one by one, which she exactly followed, I waited for her to finish them and demonstrated the next step. But, even after an hour it didn't seem to help that much. The milk was still not flowing that well, a lot of swelling and pain was still present. Now I started suspecting if there was something more to it. Still, I told her, not to give up and patiently keep trying the steps I told her and by morning if she doesn't feel better then to go see her Primary Healthcare provider at the earliest.
In the morning I asked her how she was doing and the reply is attached as a screenshot.
Moral of the story
1. Some help is better than no help (if I would have told her, I can't help and that she should go meet an LC or her gynaecologist the next day, things could have worsened.
2. Sometimes we want to be all hands-on and feel very helpless if it's a video consultation. But today I feel that the mother is truly empowered. I didn't help her physically but I demonstrated and she understood all the steps and did it on her own. So in the future, if she has any problem similar to this she would not need to depend on anyone else.
3. Patience is the key. Sometimes we might not see an immediate effect of the treatment. We may need consistent efforts to achieve the result.
4. All through the consultation I made sure I motivated the mom to not panic (explained her both the current Plan of Action and also the worst case scenario) This helped me, keep her in a balanced state of mind.
5. Even when I thought my consultation had not worked out (feeling of failure that all of us may feel at some point in time) Immediately post consultation, the mom still profusely thanked me. I think she saw and appreciated the efforts I put in and the immediate help that I provided. So our attitude to work definitely matters and clients will definitely see that.
