People are forever telling me that I am wasting my time talking to providers about the need to improve their patient communication skills. Naysayers typically cite one of the following reasons for why things will never change:
Reason 1 – Every physician thinks they already have good patient communication skills.
Reason 2 – Physicians don’t get paid to talk to patients
Reason 3 – Physicians don’t have time to talk to patients
Reason 1 is relatively easy to debunk. After all, if all physicians were really such good communicators:
- poor communications skills wouldn’t consistently top the list of patient complaints about physicians
- patient non-adherence wouldn’t be so high since physician and patients would always agree on what is wrong and what needs to be done
- patients would not be walking out of their doctor’s office not understanding what they were told
- patients would not experience so many communication-related medical errors
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