A Time To Listen

When teaching my students about what goes into a good doctor–patient interaction, I tell them about the studies that show how quickly doctors interrupt their patients. Male physicians especially, I tell them, are notorious for stopping the patient mid-sentence to redirect the discussion. In one study that I came across, female primary care physicians waited an average of 3 minutes before interrupting the patient to redirect the discussion toward issues more relevant to diagnosis. Male physicians waited an average of 47 seconds.

How long do I wait, I wondered? I decided to try an experiment. I would let my next patient talk as long as he or she needed to explain his or her reason for seeing me. I would watch the clock and see how …