Are We Communicating Effectively?

Kirsten Thomsen, PA-C
Director at Large

Effective communication is essential to almost everything we do — to patient care, education, and the functioning of organizations such as PAEA. Yet it is one of the most challenging things to do well.

One reason may be that we don’t listen enough and don’t work hard enough to solicit information from those with whom we communicate. In How Doctors Think, Dr. Jerome Groopman stresses the importance of listening to the patient and using the open-ended question for effective communication and improved patient care. PA education stresses patient-centered care, and PAs, generally, have many opportunities to develop good patient communication skills. This should translate to better communication with our colleagues, in PA organizations, and in the larger community. We might ask ourselves if it does.

One of the reasons I have been thinking about these issues recently is that I have been asked by the board to look at ways we can enhance communication between the PAEA board and members of external organizations. One piece of this is to help our liaisons to external groups feel well prepared for the meetings they attend and well briefed on the positions the board would like to convey to our colleagues. Holding a position within an organization does not necessarily mean that you are confident about how to proceed and communicate effectively in that role. Recently I had the opportunity to arrange for the current liaison preparing for an external PAEA meeting to confer with the group’s past liaison and to strategize with both of them. In the end this kind of targeted dialogue benefits us all.

Since joining the PAEA board, I have increasingly pondered how we in PAEA communicate. It is difficult to know if we are communicating as effectively as we might. We have greatly expanded our use of mass e-mail and our Web site in recent years, but in a world of increasing cell phone, e-mail, Blackberry, and mass mailing usage, messages can easily get lost or smothered. It seems to me that more technology often leads to less communication. We can become so overwhelmed with messages that we no longer receive them, let alone process them. Do we listen to our colleagues and ask the open-ended questions?

I would like to challenge all PAEA members to think about the last conversation you had with a student or colleague. Were you fully present, fully mindful of the person with whom you were interacting? Effective communication requires attention to task. Does multitasking interfere? We all do it, but at what cost? The answer depends partly on our particular communication styles. Just as we ask our students to identify their learning styles — are they visual learners, auditory learners, or kinetic learners? — self-reflection about our own mode of communication is the first step to improving it.

On the organizational level, we know that providing information in a variety of ways and tailoring it to the audience can increase the effectiveness of communication. PAEA surveyed members in January of last year to assess the effectiveness of the Association’s communications. We learned that members like to receive information through multiple channels and prefer brief bullet-point e-mails on focused topics, with links to more information if needed. The redesigned e-mail-based PAEA Networker is one result of that survey, as well as the increasing use we make of mass e-mails on specific topics and to remind us of pending deadlines. We also continue to expand our Web site, though much remains to be done.

But the question should be asked often: What can PAEA do to increase the effectiveness of its communication with members, colleagues, other organizations, and the larger community? We will likely conduct another communications survey in the future, but in the meantime, please know that board members welcome feedback about any of their Networker articles and other messages from the Association. Our communications staff too is always interested to hear how we can better communicate with you. Contact information is posted on our Web site for all board members and staff.

So please think about what you can do to improve effective communication with students, colleagues, our PA organizations, and the larger community and if you have any good ideas, please let us know.