Rotations are a great place to work on your skills. Not your medical skills, but your skills in handling people. Rotations are great for that because you’re meeting so many new people so quickly.
Here’s the secret I have for you, and those of you paying close attention you will realize this secret has two layers (the second layer is what I’m covering in the July issue of PAES).
A great secret I discovered some years back is sitting down. When you go into a patient’s room, sit. Or lean, or at least make it look like you’re sitting. It makes no logical sense, but patients judge if they got their money’s worth from you by how long you’re in the room with them.
You can solve every problem they have, but if they think you didn’t spend enough time with them, they leave angry. I don’t know why. I didn’t make the rules.
I can’t remember the exact numbers, but there was a study done on docs who sat down in the room with the patients. What they found was that patients believed the practitioner was in the room 20-50% longer if they sat down. If you stand at the door and look like you’re trying to escape, that’s what the patient thinks. If you sit down and have a conversation, that’s what the patient sees.
You can literally create time by sitting. It’s amazing. Since reading that study, I sit down every time I come into a patient’s room (there aren’t any chairs in the pre-op rooms, so I lean against the sink as if I’m having a pleasant conversation).
Something so small makes a world of difference.
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