Interpersonal Skill in Medicine: The Essential Partner of Verbal Communication

Abstract

Medical educators have promoted skillful communication as a means for doctors to develop positive relationships with their patients. In practice, communication tends to be defined primarily as what doctors say, with less attention to how, when, and to whom they say it. These latter elements of communication, which often carry the emotional content of the discourse, are usually referred to as interpersonal skills. Although recognized as important by some educators, interpersonal skills have received much less attention than task-oriented, verbal aspects. Moreover, the field lacks a common language and conceptualization for discussing them. This paper offers a framework for describing interpersonal skills and understanding their relationship to verbal communication and describes an interpersonal skill-set comprised of Understanding, Empathy, and Relational Versatility.

Contents of General Practitioner-Patient Consultations in the Treatment of Depression

“…We also did not tape record and assess what physicians talked about "in reality," but only can say what they thought was important. 16,17 Finally it must be remembered that content also needs skillful communication 23 and that we do not know how the physicians conveyed their messages to the patient.…”

Residency Training: Teaching communication

“…1 It is known that a connection exists between healing and human relationships. 2 People who enter the study of medicine often have preexisting qualities of humanism and intelligence. However, these qualities do not imply that these people have sufficient understanding of how to engage the complicated and sensitive realm of physician-patient communication.…”

Development of the Objective, Structured Communication Assessment of Residents (OSCAR) Tool for Measuring Communication Skills With Patients

“…[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] Several articles describe appropriate protocols for an objective, structured clinical examination (OSCE) and for standardized patient (SP) evaluations, yet the financial and opportunity costs of those modalities appear to be major limiting factors. [13][14][15] Although program directors agree that communication competency is important for residents to master, there has been little agreement in the literature about how those communication skills should be evaluated.…”