Active listening benefits and implementation in medical practice workplaces

Communication

Memo to Support the Adoption of Active Listening

Medical Practice Staff

Office Manager

Re;

Active Listening

Active listening may offer a great deal of potential to increase the effectiveness of communication which takes within the practice, creating increased clarity and reducing the potential for misunderstandings, especially with patients who may be emotional or find communication difficult. Research by Street and Haidet (2011), looked specifically at communication between doctors and patients, and found frequent significant gap between physicians' perception of the patients' health concerns and actual beliefs and concerns, creating the potential for misunderstanding. Factors that were attributed to the problem were presumptions and communication issues between the two parties. While this research looked at doctors, other authors have extended this to different healthcare professions, applying to both patient and peer communication (Propp et al., 2010; Beam et al., 2010).

Active listening is a technique which the listener in the conversation will repeat the message they have heard back to the speaker, in order to gain confirmation that their understanding is correct. The idea is that in communication there are distractions; for example, in a conversation the parties' communication may be waiting for a pause in the conversation so that they can speak; this detracts from the attention they are paying to the speaker. Likewise, if one party to the conversation is emotional they may not communicate clearly.

Active listening is a simple process, but takes time to practice. The basic concept is for the listener to repeat back to the speaker what they have said, paraphrasing it and then wait for agreement (Noesner and Webster, 1997). If the repeating of the paraphrased content not the message that the speaker meant to send they will not agree and the cycle of message and repeating the message can restart so agreement can be reached (Noesner and Webster, 1997). This reduces the potential for misunderstandings. Additional strategies within the active listening process may include emotional labeling, which will help the speaker feel that the listener understands them, mirroring where the last few words that the speaker has said are repeated which helps to increase rapport, and encouragement with simple nods, open questions and effective pauses (Noesner and Webster, 1997).