How to answer the most common zinger questions

Patients are very likely to hit you with zingers--extremely tough questions that require all of your diplomacy and tact. How well you respond to the inevitable zingers depends in large part upon your preparation. This article describes what you must do to prepare yourself for your patients' zingers. It offers simple guidelines for responding to zinger questions, as well as how-to instruction that will enable you to hone your critical listening skills. This article also offers an effective strategy for preparing a list of potential zinger questions customized to your medical practice. It suggests ways to use zinger preparation as a staff training tool, relying in large part upon brainstorming, group work, and role-playing scenarios. Finally, this article presents the wrong way to answer zingers. Then, through sample dialogues, it offers much better and more effective responses that you might give your patients when you need to answer eight of the most common and difficult medical practice zingers.