An analogy is a comparison of something unfamiliar with something familiar in order to explain a shared principle. Or, to use an analogy, it's like a bridge. It spans the gap between what a physician wants a patient to learn and what the patient already knows. At the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine spring conference, family physician Terry Ruhl, M.D., of Midland, Mich., presented a special session on using medical analogies in patient education.
Patients often have very little medical knowledge.
With a volunteer from the audience, he acted out a scenario in which he explained to a patient that she was suffering from hypertension. The patient became confused, asking whether her hypertension had anything to do with her previous diagnosis of anemia. Last month you gave me pills for low blood and now I have high blood. Then, Ruhl and another volunteer acted out the same scene. You see, the heart is like a pump.