This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This web site reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
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This training package is addressed to students and medical practitioners in paediatrics on how to autonomously learn, develop and consolidate their soft skills for improving the quality of paediatric services.
Listening well is an essential part of communication. This requires the provision of adequate time and patience, and the willingness to listen to parents’ concern. A quiet room, lack of interruptions, provision of chairs for the parents, sitting at an appropriate distance, good eye contact, etc., are helpful to enhance listening and learning from the parents. The general experience that paediatricians’ listening skills are good. However, a lot of physicians tend to interrupt patients after listening to the symptoms for only 18 seconds because they have only a very limited time to spend with patients. Later, they may lead the entire conversation in a way that the patients will never be able to finish their sentences. Consequently, this often leads to an incomplete description of the child’s problems with more than half of the total symptoms remaining hidden or untold. In case of primary paediatric care this time might be even shorter and more information might be missed as doctors must communicate with two persons instead of only one. Although in case of younger children it is the parent who is more trusted by physicians in terms of providing the correct information about symptoms, the child cannot be ignored during the visit either. Listening to patients doesn’t require that much time doctors suppose: most patients finish their first sentences without interruption in 60 seconds and none of them required more than 150 seconds not even when encouraged to do so.
Communicating with others is an important part of life. In the clinical setting, communication both between health professionals; and with patients, is an important part of the therapeutic relationship.
There are three pillars of medical communication:
Communication prone behaviour: attention, empathy, openness etc.
Tools for information extraction: listening, clarification, summarizing patient’s story, informing
Avoid: withheld and/or restricted information, too dominant behaviour, interruption
Analyze the attached situation according to the good or bad communication symptoms
Google dad and Wikipedia momThe elder generation tried to be informed from the famous handbook of Benjamin Spock, the younger generation surfs on the internet to learn about sickness and medication. This latter method is not riskless.
Online Resources
Poor Communication
Role play example of exaggerated poor clinical communication, used for class project.
6 simple ways to master patient communication Zalman has devised an easy way to help students remember the communication skills they need for practice, summed up in a catchy acronym: RESPECT.
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This web site reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.