5 Tips for Getting Your Doctor to Listen By Dr. Catherine Polley

In a 2019 study, researchers found the average time before a doctor interrupts a patient is 11

seconds [1 ]. Yes, that’s right, 11 seconds. No wonder patients do not feel heard. As an Emergency

Physician, I have certainly been guilty of this, more times than I care to think about. Under the

pressure to see more and more patients ever more quickly and with medical training that

rewards getting the most information in the least amount of time possible, the divide between

what patients are trying to say and doctors are willing to hear is widening. I’ve recently had to

interact with the medical system as a patient and it was eye-opening how frustrating it was to go

an entire appointment and have the provider ask the wrong questions because they were not

listening to the answers, giving me loads of information I already knew or was not applicable in

my case. I stood there as they talked at me and just waited for it to be done, hoping the next

person I saw would be better. It’s changed the way I interact with patients and hopefully I’m a

better physician for it. Doctors all need to do a better job of listening, but there are a few things

you can do as the patient that can increase your odds of being heard.

1. Be clear and concise

Doctors are listening for key pieces of information in order to figure out what is wrong. If

the story is long, rambling and disorganized, it is incredibly difficult to find those key

pieces and you are much more likely to get cut off. I usually start each patient encounter

by asking “What brings you into the Emergency Department today?” This open-ended

question sometimes gets exactly the information I need to know, but often it gets “Well,

you see, 2 years ago I was in North Dakota and I didn’t like the weather there and then

my dad got sick and…” If it continues, I convert to asking very specific closed questions

to try to figure out what is actually relevant. Unfortunately, I miss information that way,

but it is the cost of trying to weed out all the irrelevant information to hunt for what is

going on. If you want to improve your chances of your doctor hearing you out,

organizing and making your story concise can help. Here are some of the questions they

are looking for you to answer and can help organize your story.

 What are your symptoms?

 How long have they been going on?

 What things have you tried? Including a brief summary of previous doctor visits

and diagnoses can also help

 Has anything changed recently that caused you to seek care today?

If your doctor never gives you an opening and only asks specific questions from the

beginning, try your best to answer the question being asked as directly and concisely as

possible. If they are missing things you are pretty sure are relevant, do let them know, but

again, the more clear and concise you can make it, the better your chances of being heard.

2. Put down your phone

This is true not just for your interactions with the doctor, but with the nurses and medical

techs as well. The medical staff talk to each other and give each other their impressions

of the patient, so any bad interaction with nurses and techs will cause just as many

problems or more than bad interactions with the doctor. And yes, talking or texting on the

phone while medical staff are trying to talk to you is considered a bad interaction. In the

Emergency Department, if you cannot get off the phone long enough to talk to them, you

will get deprioritized, providers only coming back after every one else has been seen. The

thought process is “if you are well enough to be on your phone the whole time, you are

well enough to wait.”

3. Don’t exaggerate

Some patients are under the mistaken perception that they will not be seen or taken

seriously if they do not act as though they are very ill. In fact, the opposite is true. You

are much more likely to be taken seriously if you state only the facts, without

exaggerating severity. Screaming and crying in the waiting room may get you a room

faster, but it will likely not get you seen any faster and makes everyone less likely to

listen. It is the boy who cried wolf idea, if you say everything is a wolf, or in this case,

the worst symptoms ever, people are less likely to hear you when there actually is

something severe or dangerous.

4. Avoid trigger phrases

Hear the phrase “No offense but…” you know immediately that what follows will be

offensive. Similarly, there are a few phrases that will immediately trigger your doctor to

stop listening, because we hear them all the time and they are considered red flags. “I

have a high pain tolerance” is one such phrase. If the patient or family member says this,

it is almost universally false. People with truly high pain tolerances do not say so, they

just grimace and bear the pain. “My pain is 10 out of 10.” It is extremely rare to have the

worst possible pain and saying this is considered a red flag for drug seeking behavior.

“The only thing that works is X” when X is any controlled or dangerous medication. This

is also a well-known and published red flag and is very unlikely to get you drug X. Even

if it does, your doctor will have assumed the worst about you and unlikely to listen

further.

5. Don’t demand

No one likes being told what to do and doctors are no exception. Demanding you receive

a test or treatment will never go over well. It may get you what you wanted because it

was easier to cave than have a real or difficult conversion. However, there is a good

chance it will not get you what you need, because the doctor and staff will have stopped

listening. You may need an entirely different test or treatment than what you thought, but

neither you nor your doctor will find out because everyone else is trying to leave the

room as fast as possible. Instead of demanding, simply ask. “I’m concerned about X,

would doing Y make sense?”

None of these are failsafe strategies and the medical community at large needs to do a better job

of listening to our patients. But these 5 tips give you a chance at breaking through the listening

barriers and hopefully get you and your doctor a start at real communication.

1. Phillips KA, Ospina NS, Montori VM. Physicians Interrupting Patients. J Gen Intern Med. 2019

Oct;34(10):1965. doi: 10.1007/s11606-019-05247-5. PMID: 31388903; PMCID: PMC6816596.