“Nudging” clinicians to communicate more effectively with patients in hospital

Effective communication between patients and doctors is fundamental to the delivery of patient centered care, but it is both difficult to measure and challenging to attain in dynamic hospital environments. Specific behaviors on the part of doctors, including sitting at the hospital bedside, are associated with improved perception of doctors’ communication by patients and have become an interventional target of interest.1234 In the linked paper, Iyer and colleagues (doi:10.1136/bmj-2023-076309) add to a growing body of evidence showing that doctors’ sitting behavior may be a potent, low cost tool to shape patients’ perceptions of and experiences with communication, with potential implications for patients’ outcomes.5