Patient Communication: Hearing Through the Patient’s Ears

(Part 2 of a series)

Communicating with your patients is critical to their well-being and your ability to successfully treat them. But what do they really hear when you talk to them in the exam room? Understanding patient perceptions of your communication is an important part of ensuring the patient understands your diagnosis and treatment of their condition.

Research with patients has classified physician speech during an exam into six categories of communication: information giving, information asking, social talk, positive talk, negative talk, and partnership building. These categories are structured as a nested hierarchy, with each level representing an increased level of involvement in the interaction, and each successive level capable of incorporating the previous level. At the highest level of involvement, physicians are perceived as working to build a partnership with and actively involve the patient in health care.

Is there a magic combination of communication elements or categories that will meet your patients’ expectations and ensure understanding and satisfaction? Unfortunately there isn’t. Every patient is unique -- not only medically, but also from the perspective of communication. Communication only works effectively when it is a two-way process, with shared intent and mutual meaningfulness.

That means physicians need to be thoughtful in their communication with their patients, assessing the individual patient’s intent and ability, and working to create meaningfulness in the interaction. Simply asking the patient what’s wrong and providing information is not enough in most cases to meet patient expectations. Conversely, too much social talk potentially removes the medical context from the interaction, and too much negative feedback could alienate the patient.

Also, a patient’s eagerness to be involved will not necessarily guarantee an increase in meaningfulness for the patient. Patients may sincerely want to be involved in their health care, but without enough of the lower levels of interaction, they may be unable to thoroughly understand what involvement in their care entails.

For more information on creating meaningful interactions with your patients, contact Adam Shlager, practice management consultant at the MMS Physician Practice Resource Center, at (800) 322-2303, ext. 7702.

– Adam Shlager