What are some good soft skills to have as a physician?
It requires far more than medical skill and knowledge to be a good doctor. Although years of practice and learning are needed to develop diagnoses and treatments, it’s usually the interpersonal qualities of a clinician that determine the tenor of his or her relationship with patients, the style of work of their team, and the overall success of the clinician in the health system. Soft skills are those emotional and interpersonal skills that govern the ways we connect and separate a good doctor from an outstanding one.
Quite possibly the greatest soft skill required of all doctors is the skill to communicate. Communication, which is as much the art of having been heard as it is the art of communicating oneself, requires physicians to communicate bad diagnoses, planned treatments, and bad news, and to establish that the patient has been heard and considered. Communication fails, confusion follows, compliance with treatment tapers off, and satisfaction plummets. Effective, compassionate communication, by contrast, can optimize the outcome and establish trust. Effective communication has, indeed, been directly demonstrated to yield higher health benefits and lower malpractice litigation (Levinson et al., 1997).
Most directly related to communication is the priceless skill of empathy. Empathy helps physicians put themselves in the patient's place, to pick up and respond to things bothering them with real understanding. Empathy isn't sympathy words, though, but intersubjective comprehension such that a reality of a patient's is validated. When a physician says, “I can see how this would overwhelm you,” and genuinely does, Patients are more comfortable opening up, feel safer, and are more invested in their own treatment. Empathy has been shown to correlate with better diagnostic abilities and better therapeutic relationships (Hojat et al., 2011). And, possibly, in a context of grinding pressure, wherein a patient already harbors a sense of exposure, even the slightest expression of empathy can preserve dignity and compassion in care.
Another essential soft skill is flexibility. Medicine is a dynamic, at times unpredictable, reality with a spectrum of circumstances that require instant thought and adaptation. Physicians have to respond to new medical information as well as to the individuality of the patient. What works well in caring for a first patient may fail when caring for a second, perhaps because of differences in culture, society, individuality, or sometimes impossibly indistinct concerns. Flexibility as a skill requires an inclination to listen, to adjust schedules when necessary, and to realize that the practice of medicine almost never follows the old script. It requires, too, the management of uncertainty with panache—ever more required in busy hospital wards and in times of shared health emergencies like pandemics (GMC, 2019).
Equally significant is teamwork. Physicians seldom work alone. From nurses and physicians’ assistants to pharmacists, technicians, and social workers, medicine today is practiced through teams. A physician needs to learn how to work effectively as a team member, respecting the roles of others, communicating well as a team member, and being receptive to suggestions. Physicians who are hard to work with or condescending to others can potentially disrupt workflow, delay the delivery of care to patients, and lower staff morale. On the other hand, physicians who create a work environment of cooperation help create healthier, more effective, and happier healthcare settings (Salas et al., 2008).
Finally, emotional intelligence is a strong yet frequently underutilized soft skill. Self-awareness, self-management, motivation, empathy, and social skills are all encompassed by emotional intelligence. An emotionally robust physician can fight stress, negotiate conflict, and stay professional when it's going badly. A physician who improved at reading the room, better at noting when a colleague, a client, is angry, and better at knowing how to diffuse tension. Emotional intelligence helps physicians make ethical decisions, helps lower burnout, and helps physicians stay calm under pressure, which are all signs of a long, fulfilling career as a physician.
Lastly, as medical knowledge is the building-blocks of the practitioner's competencies, the soft skills, which are being a communicator, a caring one, adaptable, a member of the health team, and emotionally intelligent, are what give life to the knowledge in important, impactful ways. Those competencies create trust, enhance the care, forge strong bonds not only with the patients, indeed, but with the health teams the practitioner relies upon, as well. As medicine continues to be an evolving practice, practitioners cultivating these people-focused competencies will be best situated to meet the needs of the patients as well as the profession itself.
References:
1. Levinson, W., Roter, D., Mullooly, J., Dull, V., & Frankel, R. (1997). Physician–patient communication: The relationship with malpractice claims. JAMA, 277(7), 553–559.
2. Hojat, M., Louis, D. Z., Markham, F. W., Wender, R., Rabinowitz, C., & Gonnella, J. S. (2011). Physicians’ empathy and clinical outcomes for diabetic patients. Academic Medicine, 86(3), 359–364.
3. General Medical Council. (2019). Outcomes for graduates. Retrieved from www.gmc-uk.org (https://www.gmc-uk.org/)
4. Salas, E., Sims, D. E., & Burke, C. S. (2005). Is there a “Big Five” in teamwork? Small Group Research, 36(5), 555–599.