A short spoken segment from Jeff Langmaid emphasizing that truthful explanations must be communicated in an understandable way to patients. Langmaid argues that medical jargon and poor interpersonal communication lead patients to end care early because they don't understand care plans; he urges clinicians to audit and improve how they talk with patients.
Telling the truth is very important, but telling it in a way that people understand is even more important. You speak jargon to the patient, and they really don't understand what's going on. And indications that that's the case are difficult to see until it's too late. Meaning your patients are ending treatment and care early against your recommendation. That means they didn't understand what the care plan was and why it was there. And I think all of us really should be consistently auditing what are the conversations that we're having? How are we having those conversations? What can we learn to have more productive conversations? And that's something that quite often is overlooked. We're focused on new patient acquisition. We're focused on the latest and greatest technique. But we're rarely focused on the interpersonal communication of sitting knee to knee, heart to heart, with a patient and having a conversation that they actually understand.
