At the Cleveland Clinic, hospital leaders improve the patient experience by teaching doctors communication strategies that promote better relationships with their patients.
Adrienne Boissy, M.D., chief experience officer of the nonprofit multispecialty academic medical center, said in an interview with the NEJM Catalyst blog that one of the biggest challenges she faced when implementing the new communication program was to convince physicians it was even necessary. After all, most of the doctors thought their communication skills were just fine.
But that's not what their patients thought. She told the publication that she gave doctors at the hosptial direct patient feedback on those conversations--and the results were eye-opening.
“Putting patient comments about how they felt when you communicated with them, about how effective your language was, and how that made them feel --putting that back at the physicians, and showing them, ‘this is how patients felt during their interaction with you’--I think is a very powerful way of driving that interest and change.” she told Catalyst.
Clinicians also need to open up about communications challenges and experiences that may be painful, Boissy said in the interview. Not only does it offer staff an opportunity for healing and reflection, she told Catalyst, but it creates a jumping off point for physicians to improve.
The hospital’s approach to improving communication was compiled into a book and is required training for physicians at the facility. Initially, people were brought into the program by invitation, Boissy told Catalyst, so a fair number of physicians came into the experience interested and motivated. A small percentage--Boissy estimates about 5 to 10 percent--of those in the training were not engaged in the process because they did not think it was necessary, so special effort to show them to value of the training was needed.
She said the hospital also stresses the value of strong communication skills in a number of clinical areas beyond patient satisfaction, including preventing malpractice, safety, quality and teamwork.
- listen to or read a transcript of the interview