I believe you!

I know that as a clinician you may be thinking, why do I need to listen to more patients when I’m already listening to so many of my own? I used to think like that as well, but there are a number of very good reasons to go and listen to other patients reflecting about their interactions with other clinicians as it can give us insight into what our current patients may be feeling and thinking but not telling us.

You don't know much

I don’t care how good you may think you are at communicating I will guarantee that most of your patients won’t be telling you everything they know or feel, and this is perfectly normal. But by listening to other patients it allows us to appreciate the feelings and emotions that our current patients may not be expressing to us for various reasons.

 

Throughout these discussions, there have been some common themes emerging that are vital for all clinicians to consider, not only to help improve your relationships with patients but also your results. And these things are not huge or complex but rather relatively small and simple changes you can make in what you already do.

Thing like just spending a little more time properly listening to patients, making sure they feel heard and understood, and most importantly ensuring that all your patient's pains and problems are truly and clearly validated even if you can't explain or fully understand them.

Powerful words

This was powerfully demonstrated in the chat we had with Keith recently who shared his story of persistent pain after a road traffic accident 34 years ago. This accident left him with severe abdominal injuries and having to endure multiple surgeries. Yet despite all this, his pain persisted and after many interactions with many doctors, surgeons, and therapists over many years, with them all telling him they’ve fixed everything and done all they can and that his pain was now all in his head.

He explained how he was becoming more and more frustrated and more and more angry with healthcare until one day whilst going through yet another assessment and answering the same questions he has answered a million times before, one doctor stopped filling out his form, put down his pen, turned to him and said: “its ok, I believe you”. For Keith, this one sentence alone completely transformed his entire shitty journey with healthcare so far and started him moving forward on his long road to recovery.

Validation

I just don’t think I can emphasise the importance of validating all of our patient's pains and problems enough, even if we don’t understand them. Simply demonstrating your trust and belief in what a patient is telling you helps build strong working relationships and most importantly successful outcomes.

 

Whether you like to admit it or not, the fact is without first earning your patients trust and respect your fancy or even non-fancy treatments will just not work well.

Many healthcare professionals don’t like to believe or accept this, thinking their treatment success comes from their skills in administering or delivering it. But often what we do to help those we see in pain or with a disability isn’t only about WHAT we do, but more often it's about HOW we do it.

For example, it is known that giving an effective, evidence-based treatment such as education or exercise in a shitty therapeutic environment does not produce results or work well. Yet conversely giving a shitty ineffective non-evidence-based treatment in a good therapeutic environment can work well. (ref, ref, ref)

This fact often goes unnoticed by most clinicians, with those who get shitty results with effective evidence-based treatments often blaming patients when in fact it’s their crappy communication and rotten rapport building skills to blame. And conversely, those clinicians who use shitty treatments who get great results not because of the treatment but rather due to their good communication and relationship building skills.

Frustrating

This is one of the most frustrating things I see a lot in clinical practice and the research, and it drives me nuts. Clinicians using effective treatments but with shitty communication and relationship skills tend to underestimate their role in helping improve outcomes, yet those with good communication and relationship skills using shitty treatments underestimate their role in the success of their results.

If more clinicians could find that perfect yet elusive and individual mix of good communication skills, strong rapport building, and effective evidence-based treatments then we would see far more successful results.

So please make sure you go and watch all of our Patients Perspectives interviews on the Better Clinician Project. We think these are so valuable for all clinicians that we have made them all freely available for everyone to watch.

Both myself and Ben would like to thank Amy, Pete, Kat, and Keith for talking to us on the BCP and sharing their stories. We know that it can be awkward and difficult to talk about this stuff particularly to other clinicians and we really do value their time, honesty and frankness.

If you want to check out more of what we do at the BCP in an effort to make us all a little bit ‘better’ check out the project below.