In the era of efficiency based healthcare where clinicians encounter time constraint and administrative pressure, one of the basic skills is in danger of being forgotten: listening. Although this may sound basic, deep, values-centered listening goes beyond listening to words it involves listening to emotions, cultivating trust, and allowing both patients and providers to feel empowered. According to a Mayo Clinic Proceeding article suffered last year the problem with listening is that it is both a value and a practical application leading to better relationships, better patient results, and healthier organizations
What Is Values Driven Listening?
Values-particular listening is more than routine patron history taking. The listening in its essence is being present with sincere interest and sympathy, being close to distress. When a stubborn patient was asked by a Norwegian nurse: What would make a good day to you? the patient stated that he would like to wear a shirt that is reminiscent of his deceased wife. This actually helped change the way he was willing to interact with others in the nursing home.
Listening of this nature respects the self understanding of patients, heals the mind and reinstates dignity and trust all of which are vital medicine in the process of healing.
Six strategies to Values-driven listening
The article provides six specific ways that can be embraced by clinicians and leaders to make listening one again at the center of healthcare.
Not Questioning
The result of physical and emotional intimacy is openness. EHR portal can not replace the trust built up an exam room. Leaders who are active on the emergency departments, wards, and clinics would receive a first-hand insight into those matters as they cannot be described in the reports. Proximity creates credibility through which shared decision making is possible.
Action Tip: Make “no meeting zones” or set time when the leaders should be in care areas, where they listen to the staff and observe.
Curious listening
More often the missing parts of diagnosis are in the hands of patients. Health care professionals who pose open questions such as, What troubles you about this plan? or What do you believe will make your care better? encourage participation.
Action Tip: Educate clinicians on body language, affirmations and reflective listening. Even minor gestures as leaning in, nodding, or pause reveal that you are respecting the other person and inviting dialogue.
Listening that gains and opens up trust
Trust does not come automatically, but has to be earned by therapeutic listening This includes practising undivided attention, nonjudgmaking curiosity and providing patients with the space to talk about what matters to them. Medical scribes are advanced through AI and help relieve clinicians of documentation so that they can focus on their patients.
Action Tip: Implement training methods like OARS (open-ended questions, affirmations, reflections, and summaries) as an extra listening practices to use in problematic discussions.
Design Listening Aided
The importance of the physical environment is that the patients have the perception that clinicians who sit are more caring and attentive. Innovative health systems, like Alaska-based Southcentral Foundation, have gone so far as to install talking rooms environments that foster quality conversation in a less sterile environment.
Action Tip: Reorganize examination rooms so that they turned towards the patient when the EHR was in use, install sound absorbent materials to make the rooms quiet, and siting chairs by the side of the bed in order to encourage patients to sit.
Listening with QI
Top down decision making tends to be biased with respect to the realities on the front line. Hawaii Pacific Health eliminated “stupid stuff,” using a program called Getting Rid of Stupid Stuff Enterprise-wide that estimated thousands of hours saved each year. Empowered listening would both increase efficiency and morale.
Action Tip: Institutize the suggestion programs in which staff members can submit suggestions, and leaders should comment and reward the suggestion.
Resilience Question: Listening
Healthcare is a very emotionally tough business and peer support is essential. Commensality, i.e. sharing a meal, sharing stories will enhance relationships and prevent burnout. Psychologist-led structured reflection groups and door knocking during the COVID-19 pandemic provided essential support to the resilience of the staff.
Action Tip: Because only 3 out of 10 sense their coworkers care about them, establish peer-support groups, reflective practices, and intentional time to connect to sustain workforce well-being.
Listening and the place of Kindness
The Quality of Trust in healthcare is two-dimensional: competence and kindness. The patients expect the competence, although it is expected to show them that kindness. And listening is the essence of it. Studies indicate that empathy, honesty and fidelity thrives with deep listening
Listening to patients may be as important as treating them. Listening to employees helps employees to feel engaged, entrepreneurial, and retained.
Conclusion
Listening is not an optional thing it is an essential thing Values-driven listening enables clinicians to respect and embrace one another and make every layer of healthcare stronger whether in the role of patients communicating their reservations or nurses helping each other to share their concerns. Listening is the prioritized component of leaders, clinicians, and staff, so when they establish trust, resilience, and kindness culture, it goes a long way.
With a lot of the system being quantified and measured by efficiency, listening helps restore some humanity in medicine. It reminds us that not only procedures and prescriptions can heal, but also presence, compassion and understanding.
Reference:
Berry LL, Bisognano M, Twum-Danso NAY, Awdish RLA. The Value—and the Values—of Listening. Mayo Clinic