As a physician, you’ve spent many years and countless hours learning about and dedicated to the field of medicine. There’s little doubt of your high level of competence when it comes to your skills and knowledge as a doctor.
But while this commitment to continual learning is important, it’s not the only thing that matters when it comes to being a successful physician. At the end of the day, establishing trust with your patients is key.
In this post, I will walk you through the correlation between care and competence and how, when combined, they can help you build trust with your patients.
The Questions That Matter to Patients
Take a moment and imagine the thoughts and feelings that your patients might be having as they approach an office visit with you. While these emotions will obviously depend on what they’re coming in for, there are a few universal questions that almost all patients wonder about their doctor:
- Can you help me?
- Do you know what you’re doing?
- Do you value me?
- Can I trust you?
These questions help acknowledge the fact that most patients care more than just about your qualifications as a doctor. While that certainly does matter to them (your competence determines whether you can help them), it doesn’t necessarily mean that you value them (you care for them).
Let’s break down this relationship between care and competence a bit more.
The Correlation Between Care and Competence
To establish trust with your patients, you have to convey both care and competence at the same time. The table below helps illustrate what happens when you have one without the other:
As you can see from the image above, it takes both high competence and high caring for this trust to be built. Caring without competence might mean your patients like you, and competence without caring might mean they respect you, but you need care and competency together for them to truly trust you.
Why Building Trust With Patients Is Important
Overall, maintaining a trusting relationship with your patients helps you do your job better. Patients who feel valued by you are more willing to be vulnerable and share information that is critical to their health. Patients who trust you are also more likely to comply with your recommendations because they know that those recommendations are coming from a place of both competence and care.
Final Thoughts: Care, Competence, and Empathetic Listening
If you find yourself struggling to communicate care toward your patients, empathetic listening can help. Empathetic listening is a key way that you can demonstrate to your patients that you understand and can relate to their feelings.
If you’ve never heard of empathetic listening or would benefit from a deeper explanation, I’ve developed a separate post that outlines exactly what it is, what it looks like, and why it’s so important in the health field: [<<blog post link].
