So how do you establish and maintain trust with your patients so that you both reap the great benefits of a strong relationship? Read on to discover five simple ways to increase your trustworthiness in patients that you can start practicing today.
What builds trust in patients?
Patients have reported that six main provider characteristics make them seem trustworthy. Providers that appear trustworthy are:
- Knowledgable in their subject area
- Personable and possesses good social and communication skills
- Honest
- Passionate about confidentiality
- Caring
- Respectful
Building trust is worth the effort
Building trust is a critical component of high-quality medical care. The amount of work you put into developing better relationships with your patients will pay itself back 10-fold. We know that your schedule is already packed with patient appointments, meeting with medical representatives, dealing with EHRs, and more. Focusing on building trust might seem like “just one more thing” to deal with, but it is well worth the effort. And it’s easy with these five tips.
1. Walk-in ready, present, and personable
When a provider enters the exam room in a rush and instantly goes head down into a laptop, the patient’s first impression may be that the provider is rude, that they need to hurry through the appointment, or that the provider is disinterested in the patient’s concerns. That is not an environment that builds trust.
Before you walk into the exam room, take a couple of minutes to collect your thoughts after your previous patient and familiarize yourself with your upcoming patient. When you walk into the exam room, you want your patient’s first impression to be that you’re happy to see them and that you’re fully focused on them and their issues.
2. Improve your listening skills
Listening in a way that makes your patient feel heard, seen, and understood is a skill that can be acquired. You may be listening for every detail and taking comprehensive notes, but listening isn’t only about your experience, it’s about theirs, too. The patient needs to know that you’re listening.
To let your patients know that you’re listening to them, use these simple tricks:
Maintain eye contact. If you have to break eye contact to take notes, that’s fine, but make sure to look up and re-establish eye contact as often as you can.
Don’t interrupt. Also, giving people time and space after they finish a sentence can encourage them to open up more, giving you insight and information they may have otherwise withheld. If you have questions, save them until after the patient has finished speaking.
Repeat back what the patient has just told you. This shows the patient that you are listening and absorbing what they said.
Ask clarifying questions. Looking for small details can make a big difference in the patient’s care as well as their level of trust in your expertise.
Lean forward. It’s human nature to lean into a conversation we’re interested in.
3. Acknowledge the whole patient, not just the illness
Patients are often frustrated not only by their illnesses and conditions but by the treatment or advice that doesn’t take into account their personality, lifestyle, or other obligations. When talking to your patients, ask them about their families, jobs, hobbies, and what their lives are like outside of your office. Not only will this information give you better insight into the patient, but it will help them to feel respected as a whole person, not just an illness or condition. Show real interest in their responses.
4. Openly empathize
In the rush of a day seeing patients, it’s easy to go through the motions of an exam without properly and openly empathizing with your patient. You may not notice it, but they do. When a patient feels like you are truly listening and empathizing with them, they’re more likely to trust you because it shows you care.
Just because you are already empathizing with your patients doesn’t mean that they can see it. Here are a few tips to make your empathy more visible to your patients:
Don’t assume. Ask questions to deepen your understanding.
Watch your facial expressions. A look of concern can go a long way toward building your relationship. A look of disgust, contempt, or frustration be destructive to your patient’s trust in you.
Acknowledge your patient’s suffering. Show compassion for their struggles, medical and otherwise. Pain acknowledged is pain reduced.
Make realistic suggestions. Recommendations that fit in with the patient’s abilities and lifestyle show that you understand what they’re going through outside your office.
5. Improve your ability to read emotional cues
Patients often are nervous in the exam room, which can lead them to under-empathize or over-emphasize their issues, forget important details, or rush to get the appointment over with before giving you all the information you need. Learn to read emotional cues for anxiety, nervousness, withholding, embarrassment, and more, so that when these emotions come up, you can work around them to connect with your patient on a deeper level.
Trust is the key to a productive provider-patient relationship
It takes work to build trust with your patients, but the rewards are endless, both for you and your patients. When you have an authentic relationship with your patients, not only will you enjoy your workdays more, but you’ll be able to achieve what you set out to achieve when you first went into health care — helping people live better, healthier, happier, and more fulfilled lives.