At a recent meeting of the American College of Physicians, a session featured jazz and lessons the musical genre has for physicians communicating with their patients. (I have long thought mediators can learn from jazz; see link at the end of this post.) From "Jazz offers lessons for doctor-patient interaction" (amednews.com):
"Jazz is all about harmony in communication. When jazz musicians play, they play in a way that goes along with [how] the rest of the band is playing," said Dr. [Paul] Haidet ... .
Dr. Haidet and Gary Onady, MD, PhD, an internist and pediatrician, led a session ... aimed at educating physicians to use the characteristics of jazz to improve their patient communication skills.
They described a physician's range of skills within his specialty as his instrument. They compared a patient's chart with song sheets. The riff, they said, is a physician's rapid recall of knowledge.
A physician needs to be ready to improvise when
he or she walks into an exam room and encounters unexpected aspects of a patient's illness, Dr. Haidet said.
But once in the room, physicians should not think of themselves as the only person in charge, Dr. Onady said. Rather, he recommends doctors "assign solos," allowing the patient and others in the room to discuss their concerns one at a time.
Doesn't much of what the doctors are saying apply to lawyer communication with clients?
Dr. Baidet has been looking at lessons in communication taught by jazz for several years. Here's an abstract from an article of his published back in 2007.
Improvisation is an important aspect of patient-physician communication. It is also a defining feature of jazz music performance. This essay uses examples from jazz to illustrate principles of improvisation that relate to an individual communication act (ie, building space into one’s communication), a physician’s communicative style (ie, developing one’s voice), and the communicative process of the medical encounter (ie, achieving ensemble). At all 3 levels, the traditions of jazz improvisation can inform efforts to research and teach medical interviewing by fostering a contextualized view of patient-physician communication.
Click to read the rest of "Jazz and the ‘Art’ of Medicine: Improvisation in the Medical Encounter" (Annals of Family Medicine).
Note: To read about what mediators can learn from jazz, read my post Play what you know and then play above that: The role of improvisation in mediation.
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