Pursuing a career in medicine is no easy feat. There are dozens of qualifications, credentials, and specific areas of expertise required for doctors to have. However, there is one particular skill that often remains elusive to physicians: empathetic listening.
Learning to listen and respond empathetically to your patients is key to establishing trust with them. The absence of this trust not only makes it more difficult for you to do your job well, but it can also impact the health outcomes of those you are trying to care for.
If you’re someone who struggles to listen empathetically, it’s helpful to start by investigating what specific obstacles are keeping you from engaging with your patients in this way. To help, I’ve developed a list of the four most common reasons why physicians in particular don’t employ empathetic listening.
A Functional Decision
The first reason why you might not employ empathetic listening with your patients is a functional one–you might be trying to protect yourself. Maybe you’ve even found yourself thinking “I can’t get involved with everybody.”
However, when you push away the emotional and empathetic aspects of your interactions with patients, you are actually working against your own compassionate instincts–which can be more stressful in itself. While the fear of becoming overly involved in your patients’ lives is a valid one (especially in such an emotionally-charged career field), casting aside any empathy can actually limit job satisfaction and can contribute to burnout.
Time
Similar to the functional decision, another factor that might be limiting your ability to listen empathetically is time. In fact, a Harvard study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine revealed that 56% of physicians said that they don’t have time to engage empathetically with their patients.
However, in many cases, empathetic listening can be more efficient and effective because it gives space for patients to share and be heard. Despite the fact that physicians tend to interrupt their patients after only 11 seconds, it actually takes 90 seconds to two minutes for two critical things to happen: 1) it takes this time for the physician to make an accurate diagnosis and 2) for the patient to have confidence that the physician has heard enough to make the proper diagnosis. Not only does empathetic listening improve communication between you and your patients, but it also decreases your patients’ anxieties and provides opportunities to build trust.
Missed Opportunities
Sometimes empathetic listening simply doesn’t happen because of missed opportunities. According to a study in 2008 from the Archives of Internal Medicine and highlighted in the New York Times, approximately only 10% of empathic encounters between physicians and patients were identified and followed up on.
What I have personally discovered while working with physicians over the last 30 years is that the main reason why most don’t listen empathetically is because they don’t pay attention; they don’t spot moments where an empathic response is needed or warranted. The good news is, there are ways to learn how to better notice these opportunities for care–which leads us to our fourth and final point: skill.
Skill
It’s possible that you struggle to listen empathetically because you don’t know how to. Fortunately, the fact that you are a physician means that you know how to learn and apply new skills quickly.
Empathetic listening is not only a patient care skill, but a personal one as well; it can help you improve relationships with those you care about most. To learn how you can start practicing your empathetic listening skills, check out [>>>blog post]. Last blog post #6 and #5 exercises
Final Thoughts: Employing Empathetic Listening
Whatever your reason is, it’s really important to learn how to listen emphatically to improve compliance, patient outcomes, and increase your own job satisfaction. Learning to overcome the obstacles outlined above will help you pave a path toward establishing trust with your patients and improving communication with them overall.
