Conversations inviting change

Why don’t doctors pursue lifelong learning in their communication skills, just as they do with their scientific and technical skills? Good medical communicators have fewer complaints in their careers.1 They cost their employers and insurers less in negligence claims. Doctors who communicate well are better at putting patients at their ease. They are more likely to be given the right information, to make the right diagnosis and to recommend the most appropriate treatment (which patients are then more likely to take).2 They will be able to cope with the large proportion of cases where people want to discuss their lives as well as their bodies. There is, in fact, an inextricable link between good communication and simply being a good doctor. The lack of any requirement for working doctors to keep improving their communication skills, as they have to do with their other skills, isn’t just surprising. It’s alarming.

At present, most training in communication skills takes place in undergraduate medical schools. This is paradoxical. It means that students are exposed to this training when they are seeing very few patients and have no direct responsibility for any of them. They may acquire some basic skills to use in their later careers. However, it may be several years before they can try these out in the real world, where attempts at good communication have to compete with a tremendous number of other pressures. These pressures …