Keeping the score on doctor-patient communication in a platform-agnostic age

What makes for meaningful interaction between two people?

How about the following elements?

• You greet each other with full attention and listen attentively, without cutting in.
• You respond to each other’s thoughts, worries, feelings and concerns appropriately, offering relevant feedback.
• You readily extend the ‘E’ factor: Empathy.
• You show you care and are always there when needed.
• You conclude on a positive note.
• When the meeting ends, it allows for a sense of satisfaction of being heard and understood.

?Now, transpose this exchange paradigm to a patient-doctor interaction, and it would be a perfect fit.

?Thanks to technology, healthcare is experiencing a lightning pace of progress, but amidst this pace, there is one indispensability that will keep its place: doctor-patient communication. It is the master key to successful treatment outcomes and a cornerstone for quality medical care.

?There is another unchangeable factor: patient-doctor communication is platform-agnostic.

Whether the communication occurs in-person or online, the same rules govern it. The digital era offers no pardon for a doctor’s lax interpersonal skills; you need to observe the same courtesies on the screen as you would in person. Some experts think that digital interaction calls for retooled approaches, but that’s a subject for another day.

?Apart from the opening communication elements, the doctor-patient interface invites other factors. Did the doctor let the patient explain their problem sufficiently? Did they eliminate jargon and replace it with simple information to enhance the patient’s understanding? Did the doctor recap the patient’s thoughts satisfactorily, or did the patient leave with unanswered questions? Was the patient provided all the treatment options, benefits, and risks? Was the patient offered support and reassurance?

?The answers hold the key to whether the treatment outcomes will match patient expectations or not. The qualitative worth of the answers is well accepted, but their quantitative value is also crucial. In other words, scoring doctor-patient communication is a productive exercise. There are numerous studies and surveys on patients’ responses to doctors’ interpersonal skills and the challenges faced by the former in conveying their thoughts and concerns to the treating physicians. This data is valuable for healthcare organizations to scrutinize policy and reshape approaches.

?It bears reiteration that there is no substitute for clear communication between doctors and patients. The onus is on healthcare professionals, which brings me back to communication elements. What makes communication in a clinical setting so critical? Why is communication in a healthcare setting central to an individual’s life compared to contact in other environments? Because it deals with an individual’s paramount need and not an optional want. A patient’s health needs to improve, and a clinician must help them with that objective.

?Doctor-patient communication is linked to the patient’s ability to heal physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and it restores their optimism, faith, and outlook on life. These are life-altering factors and deserve their due place in a clinical setting.

Communication can have a placebo or a nocebo effect, and one way to promote the former is to have a scorecard for how well the care provider is engaging with the patient. It’s a hard tool but leads to great results.

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