ABSTRACT
How and when we ask questions can be just as important as what we ask. Popular, successful doctors – particularly General Practitioners as we call them in the U.K. – are famous for having what is known as good “bedside manner”. It’s even known to speed up and improve recovery from surgery and illness. Yet bedside manner receives scant attention during a doctor’s training, often isn’t even tested with nearly the rigour of medical knowledge, and falls way down the priority list compared with technical knowledge and medical expertise.
On one level, this is quite right and proper. Unlike many other professions, medicine is often a matter of life and death, and we need experts with broad or deep knowledge to keep us well and help us when we fall ill, working with us – through smart questioning – to work out what’s wrong and what to do about it. On another level, it’s time this changed. Given the potential that good bedside manner has, trainee and junior doctors shouldn’t be expected to learn by osmosis, on the job, by observing their 210seniors in action. There should be greater focus on the how of asking smarter questions – the use of questioning techniques and analysis of paraverbal and meta-verbal cues – to get to the right diagnosis sooner. This approach is not only rewarding in medicine. It has clear application in journalism and, indeed, all jobs that depend on the application of enquiry.
