February 07, 2010
Building Great Relationships with Your Patients
Tips to create bonds that last
By Carrie Rossenfeld
While practicing medicine can often feel like a numbers game – the more patients you see in a day, the better you’re doing – it’s really the quality of those doctor/patient relationships that more strongly determines your success, experts note. Plus, creating and maintaining strong relationships with your patients will give you more satisfaction with your work on a daily basis – and that’s definitely something worth pursuing.
Developing positive connections with your patients can be challenging due to time constraints, but it’s not impossible. Here, some helpful pointers on how to create those connections and maintain them for the long term.
Listen!
“Listening is one of the most important aspects of forging a strong relationship with patients,” says Kai Nishi, M.D., FACS, co-founder of Khalili Center for Bariatric Care in Beverly Hills, Calif. “You have to let them talk, you have to hear them, and that allows a physician to truly understand the concerns that a patient may have.”
Not listening can mean not being able to identify accurately what the patient’s medical condition is and what the problem might be. According to Cheryl Wu, a Manhattan-based pediatrician, you also run the risk of closing off the patient or their parent from disclosing important information now and in the future, which can have extremely harmful effects.
“Many doctors make a common mistake by setting themselves up as the ‘authoritarian’ instead of listening carefully and then explaining, not dictating,” says Nancy P. Hemenway, executive director of the InterNational Council on Infertility Information Dissemination.
“Doctors who are able to paraphrase their patients’ concerns will create a relationship where the patient feels heard and understood,” says Steven M. Sultanoff, PhD, a psychologist and professor at Pepperdine University in Irvine, Calif. “This results in a stronger relationship.”
Humor (in good taste, of course) is also a great way to break the ice, humanize your practice, strengthen bonds with patients and put them at ease.
Get to know your patients, not just their current medical concern
“It starts with getting to know patients on a personal level–beyond just a name on a chart,” says Wayne Lipton, founder and managing partner of Concierge Choice Physicians in Rockville Center, N.Y. “One service we find especially valuable to building relationships is a thorough physical exam that can become a foundation for a sustainable prevention and wellness plan.”
In order to have time in the exam room to get to know your patients better, read their chart before you enter, chat with the patient before the visit starts, ask other staff not to interrupt you when you’re with a patient, and look the patient in the eye whenever you can, suggests Lipton. “It is difficult, but if building relationships is important to a physician, he or she will need to look for practice models and procedures that allow that to happen.”
Take your time
We all know that time is money. But one of patients’ top complaints about physicians is that they rush through their office visit and leave the patient with lots of unanswered questions, as well as a feeling of being disrespected. This can result in poor relationships and have negative legal and financial ramifications.
“Research has shown that time spent with patients is inversely proportional to lawsuits,” says Sultanoff. “The more time spent with each patient (on average), the fewer lawsuits filed against the doctor.”
“Ensure that you are the one who has the most contact with the patient,” advises Lipton. “Don’t delegate care to secondary and tertiary providers–even on basic visits. We are creating a highly depersonalized and ‘big box’ approach to medicine today because for many kinds of office visits, the patient doesn’t even see the physician. Or if the physician works in a large group, the patient may see one doctor at one visit, another at the next. Continuity of care is critical to building relationships.”
Also take the time to track down any missing test results or information necessary to diagnose or treat your patients, advises Dana S. Simpler, M.D. a physician in Baltimore. Patients will appreciate the time and effort you put into getting a complete picture of their medical history and condition.
In addition, if all this extra time-taking makes you late for the next patient, be sure to apologize!
Give your patients tools to stay informed
After the exam, clarify what the next procedure in your patient’s treatment should be and what is expected of him. Write it out if you need to give him a lot of information, but provide a general verbal explanation as well. It will help reduce the number of phone calls you’ll receive later, and it will help reassure the patient.
Also, look into mobile applications and website links that give patients information about their illness, recommends Dave Duplay, president and founder of MedTera, which produces materials and technology for improving patient/doctor relationships. Having this information available at their fingertips will help them feel more confident and able to manage their situation, and they will in turn have more confidence in you for directing them to it.
Having a digital personal health record (PHR) is another technology recommendation for building strong relationships with patients, according to William Cast, M.D., a recently retired ENT physician in Ft. Wayne, Ind. This allows a simple transfer of laboratory and pathology results to the patient along with healthcare information that reinforces physician-patient conversations. “A visit may actually be brief but if well-arranged it may seem long and satisfactory to the patient.”
Above all, treat each patient as an individual who deserves respect. “You don’t ever want to treat a patient like a number,” Nishi concludes. “That’s when patient satisfaction begins to decline.”
– http://www.medicalofficetoday.com/content.asp?article=5090
