COMMUNICATION SKILLS — A NECESSITY OR COSMETICS OF MODERN MEDICINE?

Abstract

Doctors communicate with patients and their
relatives/legal guardians, care-givers, nurses and
auxiliary staff, colleagues and administrators. They may
be required to give evidence in the court of law and
collaborate with other researchers/United Nations
agencies/Non-Governmental Organizations. They may
need to talk to media/ Public/ legislative bodies, and
report research findings. While reporting research
findings (writing research paper), they have to
maintain quality, originality and suitability to satisfy an
intelligent and scientifically-informed audience
including editors, reviewers, researchers, funding
agencies, medical practitioners and medical
epidemiologists. Thus doctors have many roles in
modern medicine as shown in Table 1.
Each one of the multiple roles in the modern
concept of doctors is dependent on communication
skills. They need these skills to communicate with
patients as a medical expert, to approach public/
community and governments as an advocate to
promote health, to draw attention of students and
researchers as a scholar and collaborator, and finally
as a manager of a team they need communication skills
first and last. The doctor’s role and sphere of
influence has expanded from patient-alone to
community at large. Even in patient-alone approach
the goals of good communication skills would include
history taking, consultations, obtaining informed
consent and breaking bad news; all requiring good
communication skills. Thus they need to learn
essentials of good communication more than other
professionals because patients are humans with
sensitive needs. It is impossible to practice medicine
with holistic approach without effective
communication skills as poor communication would
cause a lot of medico-legal and ethical problems.