A recent study from the US has found that most people rate the doctor’s personality and the quality of their relationship with him or her as most important when choosing a doctor.
when asked what they thought was the most important factor in a “high quality doctor,” most people cited factors related to the doctor’s personality and the quality of the doctor-patient relationship, such as whether a doctor is attentive or caring or has a good bedside manner
Does this surprise you?
It doesn’t surprise me.
I think far too little weight is given to the human factors in health care – who the person is – both the individual, unique patient, and the individual, unique doctor.
Not only is every human being unique, but every relationship is unique and I learned early in my career that each partner in a GP Practice would attract a distinct cohort of patients. In fact, we noted that we could all tell exactly who was on holiday from the particular patients who came to see us in our colleague’s absence. There just is no such thing as any one doctor being the “best” doctor for every single patient.
Whilst the statistics-fanatics seem to prefer numbers and think numbers can be applied across the board as if human uniqueness didn’t exist, in the real world, human beings make choices in human ways (not computer/robot ways)
When it comes to competences, then all doctors should do their best to develop their skills and their knowledge continuously. That’s what good, reflective practice is about. Personalised feedback would certainly be useful, but reporting should be done according to the priorities which patients AND colleagues set – and that would include the relationship skills as well as competences in techniques.
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