Communication in Medicine

Effective communication said to be essential to practicing medicine.

In a column appearing in the New York Times (1/5, D5), Dr. Nell Burger Kirst, a first year resident at the University of Michigan, says that "words are paramount in the business of medicine," and cites the necessity of effective communication in discussing treatment options and making effective diagnoses. She maintains that there is also "an honest-to-goodness human presence that transcends language," and recounts a recent experience in which she was captivated by witnessing an "end-of-life" discussion conducted nearly entirely in Hindi. She describes the conversation as "hypnotic," adding that "with words out of the way, I could focus on the elements I had always been too distracted to notice."