Improving your patient counseling skills

This article has offered several suggestions to help begin the process of improving patient counseling skills. Recommendations for changing how to think about patient communication and for developing new communication skills were discussed. It would be comforting if the idea of improved patient counseling could be packaged in an easy-to-learn, three-step program. It would be convenient if learning patient counseling skills could be achieved by simply attending a lecture or reading an article. Programs and articles are good starting points, but improving patient counseling skills requires a good deal of motivation, knowledge, and practice. My sense from the feedback I have received, after working with pharmacy students and practitioners for almost 15 years, is that those prepared to commit themselves to a program of improvement have benefited personally and professionally. How quickly they developed their skills has varied, and the degree of effectiveness among them may be somewhat different; however, the ultimate issue is that they all were able to improve.