The doctorpatient relationship is an important aspect of medical practice, the researchers were interested in exploring these essential issues to improve communications with patients for many years.1, 2, 3
Looking to and concentrating all the consultation time on the lab results, radiological images, and computer screen while forgetting the patient verbal and nonverbal body language need to be changed because we are treating the patient not the lab results or the radiological images, as few patients might have depression or anxiety and nobody listen to their concern and let them ventilate about what difficulties they were facing during their illnesses experience. This does not mean ignoring lab results or radiological images which are important in reaching the correct diagnosis but reminding ourselves about the importance of giving full attention and active listening to patient concerns and questions and being a good example of patient-centered care.
In this brief letter to the editor, I would like to emphasize the importance of listening to our patients because listening can help physicians to understand the patient's concerns and worries, so this can improve the consultation outcome and patient satisfaction.4 Patient compliance with physician advice can be improved by proper doctor-patient communications.5 Medical Students, Interns, residents, treating physicians, consultants, and all health teams at primary health care services and at secondary and tertiary hospital practices need to be well trained about how to communicate with their patients in the clinics, words, bedside, and during all period of consultations and to know the essential steps how to be a good listener in a patient-centered approach. Also, we need to concentrate more on making sure that our patients understand their health problems in a simple and scientific manner without creating anxiety in their life.
I suggest including more teaching sessions about consultation skills in all training curriculums in medical school for undergraduate and postgraduate medical clinical training, concentrating more on essential and practical communication skills with patients, and also encouraging academic researchers to do more research on consultation aspects and doctorpatient relationships.
Source of funding
This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Conflict of interest
The author has no conflict of interest to declare.
Ethical approval
No need as no human data, it is letter to editor.
Footnotes
Peer review under responsibility of Taibah University.
References
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