No matter what job or career field is chosen, there is some degree of customer service that has to be achieved. Phone companies have to listen to screaming customers and calmly talk to them about switching plans. Teachers have to deal with irate parents. Businessmen have to deal with angry stockholders when the cash flow isn’t great. All of these things require some the conscious decision to act positively and sometimes to conceal your personal feelings about the person or situation.
In the health care industry this responsibility is heightened to the most extreme degree because human life is at stake and people who emotional and vulnerable are involved.
But where does this elusive “bedside manner” originate from? Is it intuitive? Is it learned?
Dr. Pauline Chen believes bedside manner is part of the “hidden curriculum” in any medical career training. She also believes that it is something than can be learned. She cites a recent study where physician-teachers were assigned time to discuss communication techniques and the adoption of a caring attitude to students and the results were favorable.
Many believe that people learn their style of caring for patients from those who train them and coworkers. Classes such as “Intro to Patient Care” are often offered in medical training programs.
A doctor, like anyone else who has to deal with human beings, each of them unique, cannot be a scientist; he is either, like the surgeon, a craftsman, or, like the physician and the psychologist, an artist. This means that in order to be a good doctor a man must also have a good character, that is to say, whatever weaknesses and foibles he may have, he must love his fellow human beings in the concrete and desire their good before his own
Tips for providing excellent patient care
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