4 tips for better communication with patients

Although my medical school created many opportunities for clinical exposure during the first two years, none of it compared to the immersive experiences that were to follow. Textbooks, PowerPoints, and lectures galore were supplanted by hundreds of patient interactions in my rotation months. Here are four patient communication tips that have served me well, and that I wish I knew from the outset of my rotations. 1. Build rapport with the first question itself. I discovered early on that, more often than not, the prompt, “How’s it going?” got me some variation of the perfunctory “good,” “fine” or “alright” as the response. As a result, my initial question of choice eventually evolved into, “Did you come from home or from work?” Despite all the training to start patient interactions with open-ended questions, I strongly believe that this is a worthwhile exception. I’ve found that this question helps me quickly build rapport with my patients and learn about the person behind the diagnoses. After all, this question instantly launches us into a discussion about either the patient’s living situation and relationships or about their job and associated stressors. This also makes me privy to information that I may not have otherwise discovered during that encounter without a targeted social history assessment. For instance, in response to this question, a patient I was seeing replied, “from the streets.” As a result, I was able to learn about and help add...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Education Hospital-Based Medicine Pediatrics Primary Care Source Type: blogs