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Nancy Hicks of Ketchum's, "Health E Minds Healthcare Commentary" discusses an interesting concept to the healthcare field in her article, "Medical Schools Screen Applicants for Charm Factor." Top medical schools across the country are introducing new criteria to their incoming classes of future doctors. Strong communication skills are now on the list of top priorities for doctors to possess and prestigious schools like Stanford and UCLA are making sure their doctor's have all the necessary skills. 

A new process of interviewing students called Multiple Mini Interviews, in which potential students essentially speed date recruiters at the average length of eight minutes for each session. The reasoning behind the creation of this new, unique interviewing process is that traditional interviews do not appropriately predict the performance of a student, as well as reflect an individual's communication skills, especially with just one interviewer as the judge. 

Since recent studies show that many preventable deaths occur as a result of poor communications among doctors and other staff members, by changing the requirements to even be admitted into medical school can help drastically decrease these occurrences.  In addition to this, more and more often when one is admitted into a hospital or healthcare clinic it is rare to find that the patient is only dealing with one doctor and/or nurse, there is typically a team or duo at the very least taking care of you. Working individually and only having to report to yourself is not a common work environment in the health field. 

With this in mind, it is also noteworthy to mention how and whom is taking this communication faux pas into consideration and attempting to move forward in the right direction for the healthcare field. This past weekend I was accompanying a dear friend on a trip to Baptist Hospital in South Florida when she suddenly fell ill. While making a trip to a hospital ER is just about as enjoyable as spending all day at your local DMV, this visit was not as torturous as I had envisioned. The nurses who we had initially spoken to were compassionate and understanding, not to mention worked extremely quickly and efficiently, we had been put into a room under a half hour. In addition to this, whenever we were passed onto another staff member, despite having all of my friend's medical information printed out in front of them, they always asked how she was feeling in the moment, if there were any changes, and reiterated her reasons for the visit to ensure correct information. We were both discussing how friendly, personable and professional all of the staff was when a shift supervisor came into her room to review how the care she was receiving was going. He asked if we had any complaints and made sure she was receiving the appropriate care and was in constant communication with her doctors/nurses. 

After reading this article I immediately was brought back to my afternoon spent at Baptist Hospital and how thanks to A+ communication skills, my friend's trip to the ER was as efficient and pleasurable as possible. 

http://health.ketchum.com/blog/medical-schools-screen-applicants-charm-factor