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Adventist Medical Evangelism Network (AMEN)

Mark Finley

Exceeding Your Patients’ Expectations

My topic this afternoon is exceeding your patient's expectations.

And I wish you'd just bow your heads and pray with me as we enter into this.

Father in heaven, whether we are dentists, physicians, medical practitioners, whether our role is as a nurse, an occupational or physical therapist, whatever medical professional role we have, patients come to us with certain expectations.

And I pray that you'd help us during this period of time to know how to exceed those expectations and offer them through the grace of Christ far more than what they've come for.

Now Lord guide our minds, gather in the wandering of our thoughts.

Michael Hoagland of the Duke University is known as the praying physician.

He is 1 of the top spine surgeons in the United States of America.

They were preparing a patient for spine surgery and the anesthesiologist came in and said, Mike, we can't do the surgery.

Well, I just checked his blood pressure, and it's 220 over 120.

Hocklin said, before you cancel the surgery, let me pray.

Now This particular anesthesiologist was not like an Amen anesthesiologist who is here whom I know, who will remain unnamed.

But this anesthesiologist was quite skeptical.

Hogland said we're going to pray, he said, alright, whatever.

Hogland began to pray, they went back and checked this man's blood pressure.

By the time the prayer ended, it had been down to 170.

Continued to go down until it stabilized.

Hoglan reported on the surgery, these are his words, we do the surgery, he does great.

The man's pain is gone, gets back to work in 2 weeks.

He comes in and he says, you know that prayer you prayed for me?

Once you prayed, something was different.

Something is different when we seek God for the people who we are ministering to.

Something is different when we approach the medical profession with a Christ-centered focus.

Hudson Taylor is the father of modern missions.

It was in 1852 that Taylor, knowing that he was going to dedicate his life to China, you know Hudson Taylor was in China for 51 years, He knew he was going to dedicate his life to China, so he decided that if he was going to go in as a preacher, he needed a medical training.

What most people are unaware of is that Hudson Taylor, the father of modern missions, the great preacher in China, went to medical school in 1852 to the Royal College of Medicine outside of London because he knew that he needed a background.

When he went to China he began with medical missionary work, began providing medical supplies and medical treatments, learned the Chinese language, dressed as in Chinese dress.

And then 1 of the statements that Hudson Taylor made that really impressed me was this, when we work, we work.

Now this Hudson Taylor, when we work, we work, but when we pray, God works.

When we work, we work, But when we pray, God works.

I picked up something interesting off the Advent Health website blog by musician, songwriter, and speaker Stephen Miller.

He made an interesting point that is so simple but so profound.

He said, God can get a lot more done than we can.

And he holds the lives of our patients in his hands and he sustains them and it by the power of his word.

He's shown himself trustworthy again and again.

The focus of our study this afternoon is a simple story that you know well.

If you have the ancient scrolls like I do, and they're getting more ancient every year, I invite you to take your Bible and turn to Acts chapter 3.

If you have your cell phone, you are not texting, I know that, you're looking at the text.

And there's a difference, incidentally, unless anybody ever told you, besides texting and the text, you're looking at the text of scripture in Acts chapter 3.

And we're going to study Acts the third chapter and look at 5 ways and compare what happened in Acts 3 with some modern research into patient perception of their physicians as they come into the doctor's office, or patient perceptions of their dentist or their health care providers.

We begin our study with Acts chapter 3 and we're noticing there Acts 3 and verse 1.

Now Peter and John went up together to the temple at the hour of prayer, at the ninth hour.

Notice carefully, Peter and John who lived busy lives went up at the ninth hour, which is 03:00 in the afternoon.

Time is regulated from sunset to sunset, so they go up about the ninth hour, 9 hours from 6 in the morning.

Ministry to others always begins before we minister to others.

Our service for Christ always begins before we serve Christ.

Patient care begins before we see the first patient.

Peter and John were not too busy to pray.

Now exceeding your patient's expectations will begin before you meet your first patient.

You'll exceed your patient's expectations when you approach your work with the consecrated heart and the spirit of Christ.

I'm impressed with a statement that Ellen White made in Ministry of Healing page 512, it's worth noting, where Ellen White says this, nothing is more needed in our work.

In other words, there's nothing else as important as this.

Nothing else is more needed in our work than the practical results of communion with God.

As we meet with God in the morning, and the Spirit of God fills our hearts, we enter our work with a new spirit, with a new demeanor, with a new attitude toward our patients.

Nothing is more needed in our work than the practical results of communion with God.

Communion with God will ennoble the character in the life.

Men and women will take knowledge of us as the first disciples that we have been with Jesus.

This will impart to the worker a power that nothing else can give.

Of this power, he or she must not allow themselves to be deprived.

You see, conventional medicine, as it's practiced in most professions today, is often based on bottom-line results.

Those results often translate into numbers.

But our prayer life transforms all of that.

It transforms our practice into a compassionate ministry where the patient is the focus, not merely the prophet or the bottom line.

We can only exceed our patients' expectations when they sense that they are being treated not as a mere statistic, but as a human being created in the image of God.

And when our lives are bathed in prayer, when the Word of God fills our hearts, when our minds are shaped by the divine spirit, and We walk into a patient's office and we see that patient sitting in the dental chair.

We see that patient that we are going to fit for glasses and do that eye check for glaucoma.

When we check out that heart patient or we study those radiology images and then go to tell the patient and report on them what that radiology report is.

Exceeding Your Patients’ Expectations

Transcript

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