4 ways to improve doctor-patient communication

Improving communication between patients and physicians is easier said than done. A recent study published in the American Journal of Medical Quality outlined how a hospital-wide communication training program was able to improve patients' perceptions by 9 percent.

This research aimed to outline best practices for physicians when communicating with patients and offer guidance on how to implement these programs at other hospitals.

The study included 7,043 total patients who reported their perceptions of physician communication through the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Provider Systems (HCAHPS) survey. Over the course of a year, physicians at an academic medical center created and reviewed communication practices in order to identify what worked well. Overall, the rate of patients who felt heard, treated with respect and provided detailed explanations increased by 9 percent.

Effective communication practices included:

• Basic courtesies: Knocking before entering exam rooms, respecting patient privacy, sitting at eye-level and asking open-ended questions.
• Formatted bedside discussion: Checking vital signs, reporting results, summarizing patient health problems and explaining treatment plans.
• Summarizing: Giving summaries on treatment plans in simple wording, including details and plans for the day.
• Scripted questions: Ensuring patients don’t have any unanswered questions about health or treatment plans.

"A major strength of this study is its generalizability to other institutions or hospitalist groups as establishing specific communication standards is neither costly nor time intensive," wrote the study authors. "While the importance of consistent processes in healthcare is widely accepted, this study is notable in highlighting the effectiveness of standardization in an area that has sometimes been considered more art than science."