How to Learn What Can’t be Taught: Bedside Manners in Medicine

JAABILI GOSUKONDA – As a practice, healthcare and medicine are incredibly demanding lines of work on their own. Most physicians work 40-60 hours a week and see upwards of 20 patients a day while managing an average of 2,500 total patients at any given time. Requiring a frankly infeasible 21.7 hours per day to care for each patient, physicians are severely limited in their time to address patient needs simply due to the sheer amount of work needed to be done. Unfortunately, business-related aspects of medicine exacerbate the pressure for physicians to see more patients in shorter amounts of time, leading to physician and patient dissatisfaction while magnifying burnout. As a result, recent studies have indicated that during a typical office day, physicians only spend 27% of their total time directly interacting with their patients, with much of their energy being allocated towards the use of electronic health records, paperwork, and other tasks. In fact, physicians spend 49.2% of their total time on EHR and desk work. While Electronic Health Records are undoubtedly important for standardization and accessibility of information for continuity of care, they take away crucial time needed for patient interaction and contribute negatively to the workflow. With an ordinary order of aspirin taking six mouse clicks, for example, the system presents significant usability challenges and leads to frequent frustration among doctors. At its core, medicine is a service-based field of work. Without adequate time spent with patients, a greater disconnect between patients and their providers is inevitable, and progress has to be made. 

Making this issue of limited patient/physician interaction and low patient satisfaction rates worse, another long-standing issue is the relatively low lack of importance given to bedside manner in medical school and training, particularly in comparison to more mechanical topics. Abraham Verghese, the Linda R. Meier and Joan F. Lane Provostial Professor and Vice Chair for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at Stanford University’s School of Medicine attests to this as he emphasizes the importance of prioritizing patient comfort by listening and being present during a physical exam. Shockingly, the average American physician interrupts their patient within 11 seconds, demonstrating the gravity of today’s situation.

To combat this feasibly, slow changes must be made to the overall system, but change can start with physician’s training. Medical schools can and should teach the importance of proper bedside manners. At the same time, physicians should keep in mind the core values of medicine: autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice, all of which are only possible through patience and understanding. With this understanding of the importance of bedside manner, physicians and healthcare practitioners can begin to build proper two-way relationships with their patients. 

Commonly, many current physicians were inspired to pursue their career path through their own positive experiences as patients. In this article, we only propose that healthcare practitioners return to their roots, and remember what it was like to once be a patient. With smaller acts like surgeons leaving matching “sympathy casts” on their pediatric patients’ stuffed animals for comfort during procedures, we know that the majority of physicians do care and want to do better for their patients. By prioritizing communication and connection with patients, on behalf of schools and training programs, the medical field could see improved patient and physician satisfaction. 

Copy Editor – Shriya Garg

Photography Source – https://www.amnhealthcare.com/blog/physician/locums/bedside-manner-what-young-physicians-might-be-missing/