Doctors-in-Training Learn 21st Century Bedside Manner

As important as diagnostic prowess is to being a good doctor, communication skills are also critical. But beyond asking questions and speaking clearly, communication is about empathy -- a skill that has been devalued in an overworked, understaffed modern medical system.

At the Medical College of Virginia, first-year residents are required to take a class designed to awaken this atrophied ability:

The four-week course, designed by theater department chairman David S.
Leong, associate professor of theater Aaron Anderson and internist Alan
Dow, the associate director of residency training, is an effort to adapt the bedrock techniques taught to actors to create better and more humane doctors.

"The reason we're taking about clinical empathy is that it's a very important skill," akin to listening to a patient's heart, Dow told the residents, their concentration intermittently punctured by the insistent bleat of their pagers. [...]

"Doctors don't know how to listen to, or talk to, patients," Leong said, describing a recent visit with his own doctor, who focused intently on Leong's chart while barely glancing at him. "They know how to diagnose."

As medicine has become increasingly technical, Dow said, the personal relationship between physician and patient has suffered, to the detriment of both. "Much of the empathy role has been delegated to nurses, who call it 'caring for the patient,' " he noted.

It's a good idea, though I hope students (and their teachers) realize that empathy isn't about acting -- it's about sincere compassion.

New Doctors Develop an Old Skill [Washington Post]
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Image: Library of Congress*