Can communication skills be improved for Emergency Department doctors?

Dr Kingsly Robert Gnanadurai MD, MBA, PGDMLE

Bangalore Baptist Hospital
krgdurai@gmail.com
Introduction, Aims & Objectives Methods Results:
In healthcare settings, communication skills Results shows 42 % reduction on
are critical to understand and meet the complaints against the ED
needs of the patients. physicians. The improvement of
Recent studies have shown that health care satisfaction rate studied was
organizations lose substantial amounts statistically significant with
of money annually as a result of p<0.001
ineffective and inefficient
communication.
Conclusion:
It is well known that communication skills are
Communication skills workshops can
not included in the curriculum of health
personnel training. improve ED doctors
The Bangalore Baptist Hospital (BBH) took communication skills with a
upon itself the task of improving corresponding increase in patient
communication skills by starting a satisfaction and reduction of
training program. complaints against ED doctors.
We brought out a book called
Communicate. Care. Cure. Reference
We also started doing workshops to 1. Rhee KJ. Perceptions and satisfaction
with emergency department care. J
train communication skills for the
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This one day workshop included key department information on patient
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This study was to see whether the attendance incidence and causes. Hong Kong J
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of workshops can be translated into an 5. Mack JL, The effect of urgency on
improvement of patient satisfaction patient satisfaction and future
and reduction of complaints. emergency department choice. Health
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