Every provider needs specific and thorough information to make a proper diagnosis and an effective care plan. Awareness of how we are breathing while in communication with patients is a tool to help us be more present with them.

Patients can feel when a provider is not present, and this creates a lack of ease in the interaction, making rapport harder to build. When patients are not put at ease, they are not as able to reveal thorough, sometimes vulnerable, information. And that extra bit of information can be the missing link needed for a provider to discern the best next step.

"...these skills are essential in a world where patient care, empathy, retention, and referrals are strongly based in how a provider communicates."

1. Active Breath helps gather accurate patient information

Miller Communication Consulting’s Active Breath model is a practical tool that allows you to be more present in interactions with patients and colleagues. Unlike other mindfulness practices which can seem a bit removed from practical application (like morning yoga), Active Breath is a tool that is directly applied in the moment so you can shift your full attention to your patient and colleagues despite daily stressors. Active Breath enhances listening efficiencies and reduces cortisol levels for better decision making and communication under stress.

Active Breath is a more intentional way of breathing. Active Breath is cyclical and continuous: You do not hesitate or hold the breath at the top of your inhale or the bottom of your exhale. While literally keeping your air flowing, you enhance the flow of communication. With this simple tool and awareness in place, communication thrives.

2. Listening attentively is not enough to create a state of empathy; Embodied Listening is.

Listening can directly impact empathy. But simply listening attentively is not enough for someone to feel listened to. We can use communication tricks, like repeating back exactly what was said by the patient or staff, but these tricks ignore the visceral information communicated by tone, body language, and intention.

As the provider gathers data about their patient, they must catch all that the patient is communicating—not just the words they have chosen. Humans send and receive information through the tone and musicality of our voice, our gestures, and each of our senses. The more we employ Active Breath, the more we open our brain to the rich information being received from all of our sensorial pathways.

Much more is being shared by the speaker than the simple semantical meaning of the words they choose. How a provider embodies empathy through this way of Embodied Listening puts the patient at ease and encourages the patient to share even more robust information which helps complete an increasingly nuanced picture for a provider to assess. The same can be said for our interactions with colleagues, staff and our relationships outside of work. Active Breath & Embodied Listening are tools for general wellness as much as workplace efficiencies.

Embodied Listening involves three steps:

A. Actively Breathing

B. Barely separate the lips so you can breathe through the nose and mouth.

This helps to release overt body tension (especially in the jaw and torso) that otherwise can read as cold and distancing to a patient. If the provider is more relaxed, the patient tends to mirror this way of being and become more open and transparent in their communication. Try keeping your lips gently unsealed in this context, and experience how much easier conversations can feel. This is a great first step particularly for providers who are more introverted.

C. Breathe through your impulses to respond, and keep breathing until it is clearly your turn to speak.

Patients can sense when you’ve stopped listening to them. Perhaps you have started waiting for your turn to speak, perhaps you disengage to write a note, or perhaps—even more sedating—you’ve cut them off. It is only natural to respond to something that has inspired us, but how and when we respond directly impacts states of empathy. Patients have walked into a provider’s area of expertise, and it can be easy for a provider to jump ahead of them; and yet, these jumps ahead diminish rapport, trust, and a patient’s sense of being fully seen and heard (i.e., empathy). And this is exactly what a patient will write when publicly reviewing a provider.

How to Practice

Perhaps during your Yoga Class (in different states of caffeination) or on your drive into work you have given yourself a pep-talk to be calmer today—only to have that mantra go right out the window when the pressure hits. That’s because the intellectual exercise can only take us so far. Does anyone know how to actually “be calm” under stress? We might “take a deep breath” when things get tense, but what about the other 30,000 breaths we take every day?!

The goal of Miller Communication Consulting’s work is to help you overcome stressors that sabotage clear communication, prevent empathy, and get in the way of you being your fullest, most authentic self.

Active Breath and Embodied Listening can’t just be known intellectually, they must be practiced through mock-scenarios that recreate the stressors similar to practicing medicine. You must build the habit of employing these tools so that they can integrate into professional life.

In our work with clients, we teach the basics of Active Breath and Embodied Listening, and then add increasing pressure and stress to build our client’s capacity to employ these skills. It’s one thing to use Active Breath in a quiet office or to commit to Embodied Listening in casual conversation. But can you continue Actively Breathing when you make a mistake at work? When staff are voicing concerns to you? When you deliver bad news to a family? When you have to answer highly incensed questions directed at you?

This practice is how we make so called “soft” communication skills tangible and repeatable. This is work. And these skills are essential in a world where patient care, empathy, retention, and referrals are strongly based in how a provider communicates.

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Miller Communication Consulting is a Human-Communication training and consulting firm specialized to enhance how people reliably captivate, not just communicate. Contact us for more information or your free discovery consultation.

Two Tangible Tools to Enhance Health Worker Communication & Empathy