Cleveland Clinic addressed physician burnout by offering a training session emphasizing relationship-centered communication, according to AMA Wire.
The eight-hour training session, called "Relationship: Establishment, Development and Engagement," included interactive didactics, video demonstrations as well as group practice components.
Here are five takeaways:
1. The training session categorized communication skills into three phases:
• Establishment. Create a relationship with the patient by fostering a safe and trusting environment. As a physician, ensure you are involving the patient in decisions and are displaying empathy with the SAVE approach: "Support, Acknowledge, Validate, Emotion naming."
• Development. After establishing a relationship, ensure you understand the patient's symptoms in an accurate context. Practice reflective listening and try to understand the symptoms from the patient's perspective.
• Engagement. Encourage the patient to interact with you, as it will boost their "comprehension, recall, capacity to give informed consent, self-efficacy, treatment adherence and self-management of chronic illness," according to AMA Wire.
2. More than 1,550 Cleveland Clinic physicians participated in the training session, led by the clinic's Center for Excellence in Healthcare Communication.
3. The training session had an impact, with participating physicians achieving higher Clinician and Group Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems scores. The participating physicians scored higher in the "conveyed clear information" and "knows patient's medical history" categories.
4. Participating physicians' Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems scores also proved higher than non-participating physicians, especially in the "respect for patients" category.
5. Participating physicians also reported "increased self-efficacy across 13 domains and scores on all three domains of burnout—exhaustion, depersonalization and personal achievement," according to AMA Wire.