Consultation and Communication Skills

When taking a medical history, effective communication is one of the best ways to obtain information from a patient; at the same time, facilitate a patient centred approach. This chapter explores consultation/communication skills within a diagnostic framework. It first gives a brief overview of the aims of the consultation and the benefits of facilitating a patient centred approach. The chapter further includes barriers to communication. Within the medical literature, consultation models and communication skills models are words that are used interchangeably to describe the process that is used when gaining a medical history. Many models incorporate more than one model to integrate both the doctor's and the patient's perspective. This includes the following: the medical model; and the patient's agenda. The success of any consultation will depend on how well the healthcare practitioner and patient communicate with each other and some healthcare professionals are much better natural communicators than others.