My communication preference is relationship driven and people orientated. Many physicians differ in their type of communication preference depending personality. My hospitalist group has a combination of different preferences that make our group unique. As a lead physician, my most arduous task involves identifying each physician’s communication preferences and adapting my preference to mesh well with theirs.
The physicians in my group most often identify with action oriented versus content oriented with few that identify with technology oriented preferences. I will go through specific examples of each communication preference I have encountered, conflicts that have arisen and solutions to those conflicts.
My communication preference is relation driven and people orientated which allows me to directly interact with my fellow colleagues face to face. I feel my strengths include empathy, consistency, and honesty. Weaknesses include emotional attachments, directness, and at times overcritical.
My schedule currently allows me to work seven days on and seven days off. We work about 12 hours per day during our work week. I share my managing responsibilities with a fellow colleague that works on the opposite week. My colleagues communication preference is technology oriented. A specific example on where a conflict arises is with our sign out process. We are required by our group to sign out our patients to our counterparts once work is complete for that week. My preference is signing out in person to allow details to be discussed, questions to be asked and face to face contact with my colleague. My colleague prefers emailing a sign out list done once the final shift is complete. I feel that this is not personable, avoids contact and omits details. My colleague on the other hand feels that face to face interaction often leads to extended conversations, emotional attachments, and overall inconvenience. After discussions with my counterpart regarding our preferences, we ultimately made a compromise that appeased both of us. We decided that we need to combine both our preferences in order to resolve this conflict. Our Comprise allowed us to sign out our patients via email but our complicated and difficult cases we were required to discuss with each other in person or by phone. This comprise helped me understand that different people have different preferences and have to be willing to compromise in order to have successful working relationship.
Second example on different communication preferences involved my interactions with different subspecialists. When I am working on a patient case and require expert opinion in a specific subspecialty, I place a consultation to that physician for a professional opinion. I have noticed that subspecialists often have action orientated preference. My case involved a young woman with severe headache. The patient was seven days post delivery and came into the hospital for evaluation of severe headache with associated nausea and vomiting. Patient was initially worked up in the emergency room where preliminary tests were negative for acute abnormalities. The patient continued to have persistent nausea and vomiting and thus was admitted under my service for further hospital workup. I ordered more radiological tests that later confirmed that patient had a ruptured aneryurm in her brain that was actively bleeding. I spoke to family at bedside regarding the diagnosis, plan and treatment course. I then placed a emergent consultation to neurosurgery. We discussed the case over the phone and planned to meet at the patient bedside to discuss options with the patient and family. When the neurosurgeon arrived at bedside, he neglected to introduce himself and immediately proceeded to discuss consent for emergent brain surgery. I allowed the neurosurgeon to finish speaking and then answered the family’s questions. I understand that subspecialist are action oriented and must be decisive to in order to save lives, but on the other hand showing some empathy, compression with families allows them to build a level a trust. In this specific example, I spoke to neurosurgeon after he met with family, and he understood their concerns later apologized to the family and stated that his main concern was saving her life.
There are many different communication preferences. I have learned that in order be effective communicator you must be willing to adapt your communication style to combine strengths of each preference and compromise in order to be successful.

My routine allows me to build some consistency in dealing with various personality types with the common goal of improving patient satisfaction. I will continue to adapt my communication preferences to incorporate different styles to improve my personal interactions.