Is interpersonal and communication skills important for 3rd year ?

[DendriticCell]

Just wondering how the interpersonal and communication skills affect your 3rd year ??
To me, i thought these skills are more important with the attending than w/ your patients, especially when you need a good grade.
Anyone has any inputs or experiences??

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[fuzzyerin]

Just wondering how the interpersonal and communication skills affect your 3rd year ??
To me, i thought these skills are more important with the attending than w/ your patients, especially when you need a good grade.
Anyone has any inputs or experiences??

Right, because if you don't have good interpersonal and communication skills with your patients, they're really going to want you as their doctor.

Seriously, people, think for a damn second. OF COURSE you need good interpersonal and communication skills - with BOTH patients AND attendings. If you can't talk to your patient, you can't get a history. If you don't get a good history, you can't communicate what's wrong with the patient to your attending.

Sheeh.

 

[DendriticCell]

well, we all know that good interpersonal and communication skills are essential in this society, esp in medicine. But, besides showing empathy to your patients, and kiss up to your attendings or ask a lot of stupid questions about the specialty, acting like you are interested in that field and etc. Is there other way to polish up our interpersonal and communication skills so that we won't seem so fake and look more real and sincere??

 

[dfagod]

I think a lot of attendings will know if you are trying to kiss ass. I would stick with the basics. They are in order of greatest importance: Never be late, know everything about your patient, be assertive and offer up differentials and treatments (even if no one asks), never ask to leave early, offer to do anything you can to make the resident's life easier, and read up on EBM about your patient I probably left something out, but if you do all of that first, then you can consider the other stuff you mentioned.

 

[mysophobe]

A surefire way to seem sincere: be sincere. The attendings have been doing this for a long time and can smell BS miles away. If you aren't interested in the specialty, don't pretend you're considering it. All you have to do is work hard, be on time, get your work done, and put effort into what you are doing.

 

[Sammich81]

A surefire way to seem sincere: be sincere. The attendings have been doing this for a long time and can smell BS miles away. If you aren't interested in the specialty, don't pretend you're considering it. All you have to do is work hard, be on time, get your work done, and put effort into what you are doing.

Second that. Interpersonal skills more important with your attending than your patients? Attendings will hate you if you have this attitude. Be nice to your patients--even when they piss you off, which they will, and often. If you can make your patient a little happier, they'll bug your intern/resident/attending less. Attendings can tell whether or not you have good rapport with your patients. No faking.

 

[Medical123]

There is a section on our evaluations for interpersonal skills. Comments about how well I related to my patients and peers were made by my attendings on several of my evaluations this year. One of my friends was marked down for "having a lack of empathy" in surgery and another one was ripped apart during a standardized patient exercise for being rude and condescending. Yeah, interpersonal skills are very important for third year!

 

[footcramp]

Right, because if you don't have good interpersonal and communication skills with your patients, they're really going to want you as their doctor.

Seriously, people, think for a damn second. OF COURSE you need good interpersonal and communication skills - with BOTH patients AND attendings. If you can't talk to your patient, you can't get a history. If you don't get a good history, you can't communicate what's wrong with the patient to your attending.

Sheeh.

wrong. during your clinical years and even residency, speaking with attendings is much more important than speaking with your patients. you don't have to be a magician to fill out some forms about past medical history or medications. you do need to speak well to summarize for the attending and come across as competent. and attendings almost never see you interact with the patient, so whatever grade they give you for that is probably complete BS.

 

[VincentAdultman]

wrong. during your clinical years and even residency, speaking with attendings is much more important than speaking with your patients. you don't have to be a magician to fill out some forms about past medical history or medications. you do need to speak well to summarize for the attending and come across as competent. and attendings almost never see you interact with the patient, so whatever grade they give you for that is probably complete BS.

WOW! You're going to be the best doctor EVER!

 

[footcramp]

don't make assumptions silly boy. my interpersonal skills with patients are good. all i'm saying is that communicating with attendings is a more useful skill during the clinical years of med school than communicating with patients.

 

[remedios]

don't make assumptions silly boy. my interpersonal skills with patients are good. all i'm saying is that communicating with attendings is a more useful skill during the clinical years of med school than communicating with patients.

my n=1 input: my interpersonal skills are better with patients than attendings (i tend to be shy with attendings). i still did great, and got good letters etc.

i think my interpersonal skills with the residents helped though

the best thing though, is if you can treat everyone in the same friendly but respectable way. the best doctors that i admire all do that.

 

[tupac_don]

well, we all know that good interpersonal and communication skills are essential in this society, esp in medicine. But, besides showing empathy to your patients, and kiss up to your attendings or ask a lot of stupid questions about the specialty, acting like you are interested in that field and etc. Is there other way to polish up our interpersonal and communication skills so that we won't seem so fake and look more real and sincere??

Why dont' you just be sincere about things you do admire about the profession. Say surgery, let's say for sake of argument, you never want to be a surgeon b/c of demands on the time. But you can still admire surgeons and appreciate their work. I don't think it's that tough to sincerely give compliment, even though your personal interest might not be with that specialty.

 

[mamadoc]

Your attending will have ways of spotting good (or poor) interpersonal skills with patients. It's inevitable that the attending is going to ask a patient about past medical history or current symptoms in such a way that s/he will get a totally different response from the one you got - even if you have good communication skills. But if you have crappy interpersonal skills it's going to happen MORE of the time and the attending can smell the bull$hit.

Also, attendings (at least in some rotations) will see these patients later. They'll see them in follow up in their offices for example, or they'll stop by on their way out of the hospital in the afternoon, when you are NOT there. Don't you think they hear about the stupid medical student or the uncaring resident? Oh, yes, they definitely do. And they don't like it.

Attendings were students once. They learned all the same shortcuts and they had the same guilty feelings about pulling stuff out of their a$$ that many of us experienced in med school. They had the experience of saying, "Mrs. Jones states that her chest pain started when she was sitting in her chair," only to have Mrs. Jones tell their attending when he asked, "Why, yes, doctor, I had been gardening all morning and had just climbed two flights of stairs." Don't go trying to suck up to attendings. Just do your job, do a good job of it, and you'll be okay.

As someone else said, the best way to look sincere is to BE sincere. Be decent to everyone. Treat people the way you'd want to be treated. Talk to them the way you'd want someone to talk to you, or to your grandma. Third year isn't some game where you're trying to get the highest score. It's about establishing the fundamental clinical skills that will enable you to be a good doctor. Sheesh.

 

[wook]

They had the experience of saying, "Mrs. Jones states that her chest pain started when she was sitting in her chair," only to have Mrs. Jones tell their attending when he asked, "Why, yes, doctor, I had been gardening all morning and had just climbed two flights of stairs."

This is so true. It gets to be humorous after awhile.

As someone else said, the best way to look sincere is to BE sincere. Be decent to everyone. Treat people the way you'd want to be treated. Talk to them the way you'd want someone to talk to you, or to your grandma. Third year isn't some game where you're trying to get the highest score. It's about establishing the fundamental clinical skills that will enable you to be a good doctor. Sheesh.

Well stated!!


Wook

 

[bigfrank]

Just wondering how the interpersonal and communication skills affect your 3rd year ??
To me, i thought these skills are more important with the attending than w/ your patients, especially when you need a good grade.
Anyone has any inputs or experiences??

Without reading any of the replies to this topic, I would say without hesitation that the skills you're asking about are of paramount importance during the third year -- in terms of your grades, the patients you'll meet, and the residents you'll work for/with.

 

[ilovepath]

There's this video at my med school for how to exude warmth and establish rapport with pts. Just watch and pick up tips from this professor.
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=72977396