Podcast Center
Video Center
Webcasts
Resource Center
Events
February 06, 2013 at 05:29 AM
Kent Grealish wrote a thoughtful comment to my Jan. 29 blog “Taking a Look at Measuring Advisors’ Performance,” which, among other things, raised the issue of how advisors should talk to their clients about what they do and how well they do it. In this regard advisors can find parallels to the medical profession, which is also struggling with how to talk to their patients, especially in our Information Age.
Back in the day, doctors’ education and professional knowledge placed them in such a superior position that most patients followed their prescribed treatments without question. That’s not to say that all patients were fully compliant—taking their full course of antibiotics even after their infections seemed to be cured, or that they stayed off of their sprained ankles or aching backs as long as instructed. With virtually no information to the contrary, however, patients tended to take the drugs or have the operations that were recommended without question.
The Internet—combined with the media’s penchant for focusing on the relatively few bad medical outcomes rather than the millions of good results—has changed all that. Armed with WebMD and myriad other online sources of medical information, today’s patients are far more likely to challenge their doctor’s recommended prescriptions, and even to seek “alternative” remedies. We’ve even seen recent outbreaks of diseases once thought to be eliminated—such as pneumonia and mumps—because people stopped inoculating their kids, based on information they read on the Web. This loss of their “expert” status among much of the lay public has caused doctors to rethink their relationship with their patients, particularly how they talk about their “recommendations.”
“The patients are now better at advocating for themselves. They are more critical of their options. They have the resources to make better-educated choices,” according to an article posted on NBCNews.com. “Now, physicians are learning to be better listeners, and to translate what they hear into more personalized care for their patients. This is a shift from the old relationship, in which doctors took paternalistic roles and patients merely followed their directions.”
