Hi and welcome! This is the first of my informal postings on issues relating to effective communication, interpersonal relationships and similar topics we deal with on Your Communication Skills Portal. Some of these observations may the be nucleus of future full-length articles.

Most important: please add your own comments below each post. Only your participation will make this blog work!

In my article How Invisible Communication Barriers Kill Productivity, I wrote about how disturbances of various types – both real and psychological – interefere with the way messages are received. On this subject, I often think of a joke that was going the rounds some while back – only now I’m wondering whether it’s perhaps more than a joke…

The story goes that a fellow walked into a doctor’s office and the receptionist asked him what he had. He said, “Shingles.” So she took down his name, address and other personal particulars and told him to have a seat..

A few minutes later a nurse’s aid came out and asked him what he had. He said, “Shingles.” So she took down his height, weight, a complete medical history and told him to wait in the examining room.

Ten minutes later a nurse came in and asked him what he had. He said, “Shingles.” So she gave him a blood test, a blood pressure test, an electrocardiogram, told him to take off all his clothes and wait for the doctor.

Fifteen minutes later the doctor came in and asked him what he had. He said, “Shingles.” The doctor said, “Where?”

He said, “Outside in the truck. Where do you want them?”

OK…That’s the product of a fertile imagination and a healthy (pardon the pun!) sense of humor. But what do you say about this – apparently – true story cited in a revealing newspaper article posted on the website of the Faculty of Medicine of Dalhousie University in Canada.

A guy went to see his doctor about his painful skin lesions. “It’s trichophyton,” the brisk young physician told him. “It’s a bad case . You’ve probably got six weeks, seven at the most..”

The patient, a 56-year-old building contractor who prided himself on his toughness, didn’t flinch and didn’t bother with the prescription the doctor scribbled down. He summoned his four sons to his home, grimly announced that he was dying and exhorted them to be brave as he handed out copies of his will.

Fortunately, the youngest son was a pre-med student and he asked what he had been diagnosed with. His Dad pronounced the strange term to the best of his ability and the young man split his sides with laughter.

“Dad,” he finally gasped, “That’s athletes foot. Didn’t he tell you?”

While this is clearly an extreme case, almost everyone, concludes the writer, “has had the experience of leaving a doctor’s office dazed, worried, or just plain mystified at the scrawled prescription in their hand. Most physicians admit they often miss the chance to educate their patients.”

Maybe it should be the other way around: perhaps it’s time for us, as patients, to educate our doctors? Check out this article on our site that handles this topic very well: How to Communicate With Your Doctor .

So what do you think?

Some of our other articles on the issue of problems arising from defective communication:

The Importance of Closing the Feedback Loop
Poor Communication: Cause or Result
The Myth of the Communication “Problem”
Communicating Effectively in the Workplace