This week: Tackling confused clients with good communication skills
One of the difficulties facing a new graduate and sometimes not so new graduates of veterinary science is the overuse of scientific terminology when describing cases to clients. Between ourselves, veterinarians speak a very technical language that helps us describe disease, anatomy, physiology and the like efficiently and accurately to avoid ambiguity. To a layman, who has never learned this language of medicine, it can be very confusing.
With experience and effort, and having seen many clients wide-eyed and pretending to understand, as vets we begin to improve our client communication by using regular language instead of medical terms. Sometimes we can't avoid the use of medical terms and it is the job of the veterinarian to explain the meaning to clients prior to further use. The most likely reason where I would teach clients new medical words is when the client's pet is facing long-term illness and it would save us a lot of time in the future to use the correct terminology.
Another problem facing veterinarians is owner compliance. Poor owner compliance means owners don't apply the treatment as instructed.
And not surprisingly, this is quite intrinsically linked with good client communication. I have to make sure the client truly understands the pet's ailment and proper treatment of the animal. With poor client communication, the owner may not understand how essential the treatment is and may not give the medication as instructed. Even worse, when treatment fails - say, during a drug trial, as it sometimes does - with poor understanding, the negative results may make the client unhappy.
But remember that communication is a two-way affair and I often tell friends that it is also imperative to ask the right questions of their veterinarian, or come to think of it, doctor or dentist. When you leave the consulting room you should understand what was diagnosed, what further tests may be required, what the treatment plan is, how to monitor treatment response and, most importantly, how best to prevent the problem in future.
So don't be shy and ask questions, but remember to listen to the answers and try not to ask the same questions over and over again. It is quite common for clients to rephrase the same question over and over again as he or she did not like the answer or wasn't listening in the first place.