Communication Skills in Medical Practice

Communication Skills in Medical Practice

• Importance of Communication: Effective communication between doctors and patients significantly impacts patient satisfaction, adherence to treatment, and clinical outcomes. Nonverbal communication is crucial.

• Components of Communication: Communication includes far more than just words; tone (38%) and body language (55%) play a powerful role compared to actual words (7%).

Patient Encounters

• Common Patient Complaints: Patients often report dissatisfaction with the cost of procedures, insufficient information about side effects, pain exceeding expectations, discomfort discussing sensitive topics, lack of sufficient appointment time, complications, and missing explanations about the condition or treatment.

• Communication Strategies for Improving Listening Skills: Make patients and attendees comfortable. Demonstrate interest in patients' concerns through body language and active participation. Nonverbal cues like nodding or holding hands can show empathy and understanding. Avoid interrupting patients while they are speaking. Encourage patients to continue speaking if they want to add anything.

Difficult Patient Encounters

• Types of Difficult Patients: Encounters include those with dependent needs, demanding personalities, manipulative tendencies, and self-destructive behaviors.

• Strategies for Managing Encounters: Strategies include maintaining professionalism, involving the patient in decision-making, assuring trust, avoiding judgmental stances, ensuring patients receive the best medical care, reformulating treatment plans, discussing expectations, and potentially connecting patients with psychological support in case of self-destructive behaviors.

Breaking Bad News

• Importance of Confidentiality: Maintaining patient confidentiality is vital, especially when delivering bad news.

• Communication Strategies: The presentation suggests employing simple, non-technical language, delivering information in manageable chunks, and periodically assessing the impact of communication on the patient during the difficult conversations.

Pre-Interview Preparation

• Preparing for the Interview: Respect patient privacy. Greet the patient first. Know the patient's name. Maintain appropriate eye contact. Create a relaxing environment.

Additional Tips

• Attendant Communication: Treat attendees with respect, acknowledge their efforts, provide satisfactory explanations, and encourage use of appropriate resources for patient information (like websites).

• Importance of Teamwork: Junior doctors, post-graduate students, and nursing staff are important parts of the medical team and collaboration with them is key. Avoid public criticism or negative discussion of colleagues in front of patients or attendants. Foster team unity.

• Active Listening: This is an essential part of effective communication. Active listening involves fully absorbing all verbal and nonverbal cues from the patient. This deep listening contributes to better understanding of the patient’s problem, improving patient outcomes.