Learning to listen in primary care: some educational challenges

Effective clinician listening and communicating directly affects patients' health, satisfaction with healthcare, and complaints. This influences healthcare policy and clinician training/assessment. Listening skills and consultation frameworks underpin training but are often poorly used in everyday clinical work. Primary care doctors provide continuity of care using listening skills to develop long term relationships. Additionally, they listen to patients and colleagues in other ways such as surveys, participation groups, and significant event reviews. All these factors challenge educators to offer systematic training which ensures that future primary care clinicians/leaders develop conscious competence in listening at different levels and in differing contexts.