The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Of communication and treatment

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jan 10, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Of communication and treatment

Special Correspondent

`Doctors should show empathy towards patients'

TWO-WAY: Air Vice Marshall T.S. Raghuraman greeting Vice-Chancellor of RGUHS P.S. Prabhakaran at the seminar organised at Air Force Command Hospital in Bangalore on Tuesday. — PHOTO: Bhagya Prakash K.

BANGALORE: A seminar on communication skills was organised by Air Force Command Hospital here on Tuesday for medical personnel of the armed forces, with the theme "Understand and Be Understood".

Vice-Chancellor of Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) P.S. Prabhakaran, who inaugurated the event, said that communication with colleagues, staff, patients and their families in a hospital was a highly necessary skill.

"The ability to communicate with people from different backgrounds under any given circumstance is often inborn. It is a product of culture and can bring out the best in you," said Dr. Prabhakaran, an oncology surgeon.

Doctors were once almost considered gods, and anything they said was accepted. But now, things were quite different and people treated healthcare as a commodity that they paid for and, therefore, had a right to question doctors about, he said.

Chairman of the first session, retired Brigadier P.K. Sarkar, who heads the paediatric wing of Vaidehi Institute of Medical Sciences, said that proper communication should be made a habit in good hospitals. Social activist Ali Khwaja, a guest speaker, said that doctors needed to show empathy towards their patients and to encourage them to be positive because emotions counted as much as the treatment in a person's recovery. Commandant of Air Force Command Hospital Air Vice Marshal T.S. Raghuraman said that good communication in a hospital meant not just saying the right things but also how they were said.

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