This article was written by Saravanan Nagappan from Malaysia.
Photo by:- cottonbro from Pexels
Lately, I have found it difficult to spend a reasonable amount of time with my practitioner to discuss my health. Many of my friends came across the same problem with their practitioner. Most of the time it will be a new junior practitioner who attends our cases and they have zero knowledge about us which makes it difficult to communicate with each other. They do not know our medical history and do not even ask us to explain our medical condition. Because of this, they fail to assess our IBD problems properly. They are not able to communicate our health progress, treatment, nutrition and medicine side effects clearly. All this happens because of the poor communication between patients and practitioners.
The Practitioner’s Role in Communication
First of all, I prefer practitioners to be able to allocate a reasonable amount of time with their IBD patients. The most common problem is that practitioners do not spend enough time listening. Today, many practitioners rush to achieve their daily patient quotas rather than providing a quality treatment or consultation with their patients. Practitioners should spend at least 15 to 20 minutes with their patients to ensure they fully understand their health history, health progress, current treatments and manage to address their patients’ concerns.
Apart from this, practitioners should reduce time spent using the computer and increase the time spent physically looking at the patient when they are consulting. This is important because patients want to know that their practitioner is listening to what they say. If the practitioner fails to do so, the patient may lose trust and interest with treatment and they might not be comfortable continuing to share after that. This can be damaging to patients, because this can lead to wrong decisions in their treatment which may lead to worse outcomes.
Practitioners also should not dominate the conversation. They should give space for patients to ask questions and allow them to share their concerns or opinions. By getting the patients’ opinion and their concern over any treatment, the process of patient care can be easy and more accurate. For example, by allowing patients to share their pain level, pain tolerance level, new symptoms, new type of recess; practitioners will be able to find more accurate solutions or find new phenomena they were not looking at before. This could improve appropriateness and accuracy in the treatment process and/or procedures; even helping to develop new technology or medicines.
It is also important for practitioners to ask patients if they have any questions. They may not realize that some patients will remain quiet until the practitioner asks. In addition, practitioners should use simple language with their patients. In my experience, practitioners use many scientific terms, which most patients don't understand and get more confused and anxious, especially over their test or treatment results. Practitioners should understand that their patients come from different backgrounds and not all can understand medical jargon. By using simple, layman terms and explanations, the message can be communicated clearly to patients. This will help to avoid misunderstandings and definitely improve patients’ trust for their practitioners.
The Patient’s Role in Communication
It is not only practitioners who have the responsibility to improve communication. Patients have an equal role to play to improve communication. Prior to their health visit, patients should spend some time preparing themselves by writing down their concerns, questions and opinions that they want to discuss with their practitioners. This will help them not forget what important matters to ask or inform their provider about, or to simply not take up too much of the practitioners’ time.
The patient-practitioner communication is a core element for good medical practice. I believe that stronger patient-practitioner communication can lead to good patient healthcare and a better understanding of the present health problem(s) for both sides.
To achieve this, both patients and practitioners need to work together.