Applying Communication Basics
to Your Practice
Comfort
Being comfortable, extroverted, and fully attentive to your patient is vital during your interaction. A doctor who is uncomfortable or shy around others will have difficulty instilling confidence. On the other hand, raising a doctor's ability to feel comfortable with patients improves his/her ability to gain patients' respect.
Effectively Delivering Communication
The key to making sure you have been heard and understood is speaking clearly, using the most effective amount of volume, which is slightly louder than a normal speaking voice, and speaking slowly. Deliver what you say with complete confidence and your message will have a more productive effect. An empathetic, strongly interested tone is a must.
If you are not sure whether you have been heard, ask! Continuing to communicate past something that was not heard or understood will cause your patient to feel confused and lose confidence.
Listening Skills
Listening attentively is an underrated and vital component of effective patient relations. Imagine a patient calling your office and describing her needs to an intake person who doesn't listen to what she said. This is not helpful in building a practice. It is essential for patients to know that they have been heard and understood. You achieve this with a clear acknowledgment. It is bad manners, however, to cut a person off with a pre-acknowledgment. Interrupting patients is a common practice by doctors and staff and, unfortunately, always results in some degree of upset. Therefore, always wait until the person is through speaking before responding.
You can also cause an upset when you fail to acknowledge what a patient says. This is because the individual will think you did not listen. Many relations are hurt because of poor listening skills. This is because failure to listen causes disagreement, and disagreements cause patients to change medical providers. The key to good listening skills is to place full attention to the person talking. When you find yourself having difficultly focusing on a patient's comments, the patient likely uttered something that was not understood. Never be embarrassed to ask for clarification.