Characteristics of a Doctor

Doctors must show understanding and involvement as part of providing quality patient care.

Patients expect excellent medical expertise from their doctor, but other factors contribute to a healthy patient-doctor relationship. Patients respond positively to doctors who show compassion and try to understand patient fears and concerns. Doctors aiming to provide quality patient care must focus on developing patient-centered skills such as empathy and respect for patients; this helps provide the type of care patients seek and enables doctors to gain utmost job satisfaction.

Confident Approach

A doctor must convey confidence in his abilities as a physician to the patient; this inspires trust in his patient, who is then more confident to entrust himself to the doctor. The doctor must communicate knowledge in the way he asks questions about patient symptoms and behavior. Patients derive confidence from such factors as the experience of the doctor in treating diseases or disorders of their kind and the advanced infrastructure the doctor uses for diagnosis and treatment. Doctors who don't get angry or hesitate to respond to patients' or family members' medical queries obtained from other health care providers score points in confidence. A doctor who responds to a patient's "There was this doctor who told me..." with a calm reply that either asserts or corrects the information is more likely to connect with the patient.

Respectful of Patients

Good doctors don't treat patients as another case but as individuals who need their professional help. Patients are happy with doctors who show good manners, such as apologizing for delaying an appointment, and explaining a patient's condition in simple language rather than medical jargon. Such doctors don't patronize patients; they directly communicate to patients information they need to know. They explain about different treatments available for the patient's condition and the advantages and disadvantages of each. This way, these doctors guide -- not force -- patients to make a well-informed decision.

Empathy

Good doctors are empathetic with patients' conditions. They listen to patients with rapt attention and understand their fears and perspective of the medical condition. They talk to patients in a calm, soothing voice and alleviate irrational fears. Such doctors use real-life stories to motivate patients to fight their condition.

Professionalism

Professionalism is evident in the way the doctor treats his role as a caregiver and the extra mile he's willing to go for his patients. A doctor who looks at his practice and patients only as a business, without any sense of involvement, can't motivate patients to recover. Doctors who respect their profession show enthusiasm for their job. Their interest in their patients doesn't end with surgery; they put in the time and effort to know how the patient is recovering after surgery and provide them essential guidelines for speedy recovery.

References

• Mayo Clinic Proceedings: Patients' Perspectives on Ideal Physician Behaviors; Neeli M. Bendapudi, PhD; Leonard L. Berry, PhD; Keith A. Frey, MD, MBA; Janet Turner Parish, PhD; and William L. Rayburn, MD; 2006
• Education Health: Why a Medical Career and What Makes a Good Doctor? Beliefs of Incoming United States Medical Students; RA Gillies, PR Warren, E Messias, WH Salazar, PJ Wagner, TA Huff; Dec. 2009