Patients may leave a practice for any number of reasons, but learning to communicate with empathy can help build trust,making it less likely they will leave. Patients do not like to feel judged, so instead, judge the condition or behavior, O’Connell said.

The practitioner should not call the patient “fat” or “lazy” but should ask him if he understands the connection between exercise or smoking, for example, to poor health. If patient think their practitioners are judgmental, they will not want to continue going to them, O’Connell said, so it is important to normalize patients’ ambivalence to change in behavior or reluctance to continue as a patient. Normalizing simply tells patients that it is ok to feel uncertain, he said.

Patients may leave a practice for any
number of reasons, but learning to
communicate with empathy
can help build trust…

Appropriate self-disclosure helps to build empathy, O’Connell said, but this does not include telling a patient ‘I understand how you feel,’ because in all likelihood, the practitioner does not.

Appropriate self-disclosure helps to

build empathy… 

image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physician