The Art of Explaining: Starting With the Big Idea

By HANS DUVEFELT We live in a time of thirty second sound bytes, 280 character tweets and general information overload. Our society seems to have ADHD. There is fierce competition for people’s attention. As doctors, we have so many messages we want to get across to our patients. How many seconds do we have before we lose their attention in our severely time curtailed and content regulated office visits? I have found that it generally works better to make a stark, radical statement as an attention grabber and then qualifying it than to carefully describe a context from beginning to end. Once a person shows interest or responds with a followup statement or question, you have a better chance for a meaningful discussion. Just starting to explain something without knowing if the person wants to hear what you have to say could just be a waste of time. Here are some of my typical conversation starters – or stoppers, if you will: “The purpose of a physical is to talk about stuff that could kill you, more than about symptoms that annoy.” “Nothing makes a cold go away faster.” “Urology is about plumbing, nephrology is about chemistry.” “Most headaches are migraines.” “Sinus headaches don’t exist in Europe.” “I don’t care what your blood pressure is today if you’re scared or in pain.” “A healthy lifestyle is at least as effective as taking Lipitor.” “We now know that eating fat makes you lose weight.” ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Medical Practice Physicians Primary Care Hans Duvefelt health communication Source Type: blogs