Not listening creates a huge cost to the medical system. Dr. Michael Buist is here today, to talk about that cost and the importance of listening in a medical setting. Dr. Michael Buist is a full time academic physician and intensive care specialist. He is a graduate of Otago Medical School in New Zealand (MB ChB 1983) and completed specialist training with the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in intensive care medicine (FRACP 1991, FCICM 2010). In 2007, he graduated Doctor of Medicine with the submission of his thesis to Monash University; The epidemiology and prevention of in hospital cardiac arrests. He also has a graduate certificate in health economics from Monash University (2001). He is a Honorary Clinical Professor, Faculty of Health, University of Tasmania. In addition he undertakes private physician clinics in a community general practice in Wynyard, Tasmania and is a clinical coordinator for Ambulance Tasmania. His academic contributions (80 peer review publications) are in the areas of health reform, evidence-based approaches to improving hospital systems and processes, and clinical engagement, on contemporary issues related to patient safety and patient centred care. He has made significant contributions to patient safety that has had a substantial positive impact on hospitals, clinicians and communities nationally and internationally. This is best exemplified by his two publications on Rapid Response Systems in the British Medical Journal (2002 and 2007) and the Lancet (2005). Professor Buist has been a passionate and public advocate for health system quality and reform with a particular focus on patient safety.

In this episode, Dr Michael Buist describes the impact of limited listening training in the medical profession. Michael outlines the personal cost to him and his wife of not being heard whilst they were patients in hospital and the systemic implications across the medical and public sector which provides most of the funding to health care.

Tune in to Learn

• How Michael is passionate about the role of listening in a medical context.
• Michael’s athletic coach taught him how to listen with his own body to notice the congruence of what is being said and what the body is showing.
• How the most important thing that can be changed in the medical profession is reforming the listening between patient and caregiver which takes place at the bedside.
• The nuances of listening and observing children who are faced with life and death issues.
• Michael shares powerful personal stories about life, death, and himself and his own family. These stories accentuate Michael’s passion for listening.
• Transforming 21st century medicine to patient centered medicine.
• Assuming that people are listening and not teaching people to listen well.
• How not listening can lead to adverse medical events. Patients need to be listened to.
• How patients who don’t have doctorates and aren’t highly educated get ignored.
• The problem with healthcare is too based on how the healthcare system runs as opposed to patient centric care.
• Asking what was the best part of your day instead of saying how is your day. Listening is about conversation.
• When there is an equivalent level of verbal questions and listening that goes both ways people are hitting it off.
• Teaching students to ask thoughtful questions from a medical perspective.
• The power of exploring what is unsaid.
• How a UK hospital had a culture of substandard care. A woman blew the whistle on the hospital on how her mother was treated there.
• They found that the right culture needs to be created at the bedside, and a big part of that culture is just listening to patients.
• Patients need to be treated as human beings who do understand their bodies.

Links and Resources:

2014 Paris keynote - Please listen to me, I am bleeding - Michael Buist

Australian Story - Doctor in the House (Dr Michael Buist)

Quotes:

“When I was growing up we didn’t have sophisticated training tools, so it was all about listening to your body.” Dr. Michael Buist

“Listening to me is not about just taking in the words. It is taking in the whole environment and what is happening.” Dr. Michael Buist

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