Prostate Patient

Listening skills are vital in any customer service role. And that's certainly the case for the medical profession. While I was in hospital, I had a classic example of a senior nurse actively listening and yet doing it in an unpleasant way.

It's a mistake that experienced service providers often make. Before sharing with you what happened to me with the senior nurse, let me first explain what I mean by active listening.

We live in a busy world these days, and as a result, many people aren't particularly good at listening. They hear what the other person has to say, let them know that they've heard with comments like 'Uhu', 'I see' and the like, but they often don't confirm understanding.

Is what we think they've said, what the other person thinks they've told us?

There are two key steps to active listening -

1. Attend to what the other person is saying. In other words, pay attention.
2. Confirm understanding. In other words, paraphrase what the other person has said and feed this back to them in the form of a closed question. That way we can check whether or not what they think they've told us is what we think we've heard.

For example, " So, you're fine when you're on your back, but as soon as you lie on your side you feel the pain. Is that right?"

Where some experienced service providers get it wrong is that they correct rather than confirm understanding. Here's what happened to me in hospital on the Wednesday after my operation:

Nurse: " Is this Day Two for you?"

Patient: "Well, I had my operation on Monday, so it's my third day."

Nurse: "Yes, it's Day Two."

I stand corrected!

It's not a very nice feeling being corrected, especially when you're feeling a bit fragile. So, how could she have handled this more diplomatically? How about something like this?

Nurse: "Your third day? Good. Just in case anyone else asked you, we start counting from the day after your operation, so in hospital terms, this is Day Two."

Confirming understanding is a wonderful speech habit to have. The English language is just made for misunderstandings, so it really does pay to check. And most of the time, active listening demonstrates to people that you are listening and that they are important. You are taking the time to really listen to them. Where this falls down, is when officious people like the nurse in my example correct rather than confirm understanding.

First Impressions

Interestingly, my first impressions with this nurse hadn't been that great. When she first came into my room at the beginning of her shift, she was chewing. That seemed to me to be rather unprofessional.

I had this nurse on a couple of occasions. Technically, she seemed to be most competent. But I didn't take to her nearly as much as many of the other nurses. First impressions tell us a lot.