Clinical Communication by Wendy S. Harpham

Communication is a core clinical competency—one that shapes patients’ trust, understanding, and ultimately healing. This engaging book provides a master class on expressing compassion in clinician–patient interactions, and on hearing what’s said in healing ways.

Using intimate stories, practical insights, and memorable tips, Clinical Communication: Finding the Best Words to Inform, Comfort, and Motivate Patients encourages clinicians and learners at all levels to appreciate the power of their words to inform, comfort, and motivate patients. Further, it pulls back the curtain on practical and emotional issues for healthcare professionals, providing patients with insights into what a clinician likely intended, and not how what was said might have sounded.

Award-winning writer Dr. Wendy S. Harpham mines her experiences as both a physician and survivor of life-threatening illnesses to explore clinical scenarios that carry risks of miscommunication. Intimate vignettes illustrate patients’ challenges, which are used to discuss the varied ways clinicians’ words might impact how patients feel and what they do.

Highlighting common medical phrases that may unwittingly cause distress, such as “I understand,” this valuable resource offers alternative language that strengthens healthcare professionals’ bonds with patients. With busy clinicians in mind, each topic includes callouts and takeaways that highlight key ideas. Questions at the end of each topic provide a waystation for processing new ideas and reflecting on personal experiences and aspirations before moving on.

Clinical Communication: Finding the Best Words to Inform, Comfort, and Motivate Patients makes a convincing case that using words that foster harmony of body, mind, and spirit in patients promotes a similar harmony in the healthcare professionals who say them. Watching a frightened patient calm down without drugs may provide a sense of fulfilment even when medical therapies fail. Seeing how words can guide a confused patient, motivate a hesitant patient, comfort a grieving patient, and inspire a despairing patient can help healthcare professionals continue their personal development and sustain their commitment to deliver quality care and support to patients.

Through her engaging writing and practical tips, the author ensures that readers gain insights and ideas in improving communication skills. The contents are designed for use by a wide audience, including those in healthcare training programs, narrative medicine courses, and for book clubs. In a world of time-limited medical visits and escalating rates of clinician burnout, this book answers the call for a realistic way to help preserve compassion on both sides of the stethoscope. Clinical Communication: Finding the Best Words to Inform, Comfort, and Motivate Patients is essential reading for the sake of clinicians, patients and the art of medicine.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Wendy S. Harpham, MD, FACP, is a doctor of internal medicine and long-term cancer survivor. Her award-winning books and articles explore ways for patients and their caregivers—healthcare professionals, aides, family, and friends—to promote patients’ healing. She is a fellow of the American College of Physicians (ACP). She lives in Dallas, Texas, with her husband.