I've heard a life­time of hor­ror sto­ries about the "Mt Hope hos­pi­tal," aka the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ence Com­plex (some­body please come up with a short­er name!). So I was none too pleased when some­one ex­treme­ly dear to me took his moth­er there for heart surgery. Gruff nurs­es, bad bed­side man­ners, a fac­to­ry line-up of in­pa­tients and out­pa­tients in a set­ting in­dif­fer­ent to the gen­uine needs of hu­man care... I was call­ing every few hours to find out what was go­ing on, how she was do­ing, what's the lat­est, be­ing so con­vinced that death by neg­li­gence or im­per­ti­nence was im­mi­nent.?

Ap­par­ent­ly, I ran up my phone bill for noth­ing. His moth­er was in great hands, lit­er­al­ly. They would talk to her, he said. The nurs­es would sit on her bed and chat with her, make jokes with her, ask her about her fam­i­ly, how she was feel­ing, what she want­ed, if she missed watch­ing the His­to­ry Chan­nel.?

When I had a prob­lem, he said, even if I knew it was be­yond their con­trol, they would talk to me and keep me up­dat­ed. They would let me know that they were try­ing, that they cared about me and "mam­mie."?Mam­mie's surgery was suc­cess­ful. She's back home, walk­ing around and tend­ing to her grand­kids. (Her dog Fat Boy is an­oth­er sto­ry.) Fol­low-up vis­its have been arranged, as well as a mas­sive sponge cake for the nurs­es and doc­tors who made the ex­pe­ri­ence such a heart­en­ing one. I am not pleased that I'm so far away from that sponge cake.

Doc­tors with at­ti­tude

Stud­ies show the val­ue of such "un­med­ical" care: health­care that in­volves treat­ing a pa­tient's emo­tion­al and men­tal well­be­ing. En­sur­ing a pa­tient "feels" bet­ter, ie feels want­ed, ap­pre­ci­at­ed, looked af­ter and val­ued, even by to­tal strangers of to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent ages, eth­nic­i­ties and cul­tures, af­fects pa­tience com­pli­ance and the over­all qual­i­ty of his or her health­care. It gives them im­pe­tus to live. In­deed, it al­so af­fects the bot­tom line. I saw a new den­tist on Gor­don Street, San Fer­nan­do, some years aback. I asked her for her name; she replied "Dr" so-and-so, no first name. Bad move. She nev­er smiled, so I felt more of a prob­lem than a pa­tient. Maybe it was be­cause I asked ques­tions. But wasn't I sup­posed to? Maybe I asked too many ques­tions, be­cause the re­sponse to the last one was a veiled in­sult, some­thing of which she prob­a­bly wasn't even aware.She was young, but that was no ex­cuse.

I was younger, and knew bet­ter. I knew to seek a new den­tist, who was per­haps the same age as Dr So-And-So, and yet treat­ed me like I was spe­cial. (Thank you, Dr Anush­ka Sinanan! I'm still do­ing you-know-what!) The ex­pe­ri­ence is not spe­cif­ic to T&T alone. In­deed, even in the most de­vel­oped places on the plan­et, not every­one com­mu­ni­cates with em­pa­thy. I saw a spe­cial­ist sev­er­al months ago: ed­u­cat­ed guy, I guess, hand­some, nice of­fice, plen­ty plants. But he kept his dis­tance, lit­er­al­ly. His eye­brows were arched high on his fore­head as if in con­stant aloof­ness, re­mind­ing me of Naipaul's wife. Oth­er­wise he did his job very well. But I didn't like him. So the next time, I took my prob­lem and my in­sur­ance mon­ey some­where else. "He's a good guy, good guy," my new doc­tor said when I men­tioned Dr High­brow, but there was a tac­it un­der­stand­ing of why I made the switch.

Train­ing med­ical stu­dents

Good com­mu­ni­ca­tors lis­ten, em­pathise and make oth­er peo­ple feel spe­cial. They know how to con­vey their mes­sages with­out of­fence or am­biva­lence. They know how to reel peo­ple in with­out mak­ing oth­ers feel used. In fact, a great com­mu­ni­ca­tor knows how to make the in­ter­ac­tion mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial.?For two years, I tu­tored com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills at UWI's Med­ical Sci­ences fac­ul­ty. It wasn't the most well-re­ceived course on the syl­labus: why do the bright­est stu­dents in the na­tion need to know what dis­tance to keep from pa­tients? Whether to sit or stand? Hell, even how to spell cor­rect­ly? The course, and its tu­tor, was re­ceived es­pe­cial­ly poor­ly when stu­dents saw their poor grades. But, as I re­mind­ed them, these were the skills that would dif­fer­en­ti­ate them in the work­ing world.

Every­body comes out with the same de­gree, yet some doc­tors get more pa­tients than oth­ers, get far­ther than oth­ers, and are more pop­u­lar than oth­ers. One rea­son, as hith­er­to il­lus­trat­ed, is their com­mu­ni­ca­tion ef­fec­tive­ness. With the en­dur­ing bad rap among pub­lic hos­pi­tals, it is as­ton­ish­ing to ob­serve the com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills of health prac­ti­tion­ers, es­pe­cial­ly pa­tients' pri­ma­ry source of con­tact, the nurs­es, are so per­sis­tent and ef­fi­ca­cious. Maybe I should take some cred­it for this: the nurs­es, too, do the com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills course for their bach­e­lor's. But se­ri­ous­ly, let's for­get the myths and look at the facts. Give praise where praise is due, and yet is so rarely giv­en. Be­cause, re­al­ly, for mam­mie and oth­ers like her, it can make the dif­fer­ence be­tween life and death.