Bedside manners can make or break the experience for patients. Learn how to make their lives (and your job) better.

Manners matter. If you’ve been working in a hospital for very long, odds are you have heard the term “bedside manner” at least once or twice. The phrase was coined in 2001 by Dr. Rita Charon after she noticed better results in patients that received good bedside manner.

This discovery has led others to reevaluate their interactions with patients in an attempt to perfect their practice as well as get and maintain patients on a long-term scale. This article will go over what it takes to have good bedside manners.

Good Bedside Manner

Patients typically need six specific things when engaging their doctor. First and foremost is trust. Patients want to feel like they can trust their doctor, and thus their diagnosis. Especially for negative prognoses, patients want reassurance and an explanation when outcomes or situations do not make sense.

To create a positive relationship with your patients, they need to feel comfortable enough to ask questions and to make those inquiries without worrying about backlash. In addition, people want to take part in the decision-making.

To break it down, the following aspects are all important for good bedside manners:

• Trust
• Reassurance
• Understandable Explanations
• Patients Comfortable Asking Questions
• Patients Not Judged Personally
• Patients Are Part of the Decision-Making

How to Improve Bedside Manners

Good bedside manners can make it easier for providers to identify what ails the patient in a timely manner and with a bit more accuracy. So what can you do to improve?

Here are a few tips:

Prepare for visit before entering room

• Knock before opening the door
• Always be polite
• Never shun patient’s health-related questions
• Make eye contact
• Try to sit if possible
• Ask probing questions
• Repeat patient’s questions/answers out loud before moving on
• Humor beliefs; do not be condescending
• Listen and have patience

To confirm whether or not the bedside manner you are providing is up to patient’s expectations, evaluate how they engage you. Are they warm and friendly? Do patients joke with you? If the answer is yes, odds are you are on the right track. Having said that, it is important to remember there are patients that are simply not the talking type. Be extra patient with them. If they make a return appointment, take it as a sign your bedside manner is at least on par with what they need.

When To Worry

There are telltale signs associated with bad bedside manner. To name a few, patients do not follow your advice, they consistently lie about what they are experiencing, and/or never make a return appointment. Naturally, when you are first starting out this is likely to happen due to the emotional learning curve.

If you’ve been working in the healthcare industry for a while and start to notice a decline in the number of patients you are seeing every day, it may be time for self-examination. Look for and remedy the following bad habits:

• Rushing through visits
• Interrupting patients
• Being condescending
• Ignoring what they say
• Utter the words “Because I said so.”

Letting any of the above the issues go unchecked can spiral into a PR catastrophe, loss of patients, and even getting fired.