Doctor, Can You Hear Me?
Patient, Are You Listening?By Margaret Smith Washington
From three decades as a health care administrator and three years of listening to patients and health care providers through surveys, focus groups, and interviews, Margaret Smith Washington has diagnosed the breakdown in communication between doctors and patients and devised a practical "Prescription for Progress" to help patients and those who care for them learn to listen to-and to hear each other.
Profiles of the 3,000 respondents and analyses of their responses provide a research framework for the vibrant human portrait of doctor-patient relationships that emerges in the direct quotations and vignettes from a broad range of health conditions and medical specialists and patients from across the country.
The final chapters include physician and patient "wish lists" for one another's behavior, model communication contracts for physicians and patients, and a template for a patient-maintained personal medical history.
Because it draws upon the feelings and ideas of so many individuals, the book speaks to a broad audience of patients and of enlightened health care providers (physicians and their office staff, nurses, social workers, therapists, and students) who understand that we are all patients at some point in our lives and who are seeking to improve both their own level of communication and the quality of health care delivery.
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