Step 2 CS Preparation: Doctor-Patient Communication required reading

What a wealth of terrific information can be found in the following: The Experts: How to Improve Doctor-Patient Communication, from The Wall Street Journal. The gathering of these experts offering their views about how to improve the Doctor-Patient relationship resulted from the publication of a brilliant piece in the WSJ, (with which we here at C3NY are extremely familiar), The Talking Cure for Health Care:   Improving the ways doctors communicate with their patients can lead to better care—and lower costs, which was published in April of 2013.

Do yourself a favor, and take a few minutes to read both articles.

There is so much great information, it is really hard to pick just a few tidbits to share with you, as help for your Step 2 CS preparation.  “Let’s start by looking in the patient’s eyes”; “Listen more, talk less” (this is one of our primary axioms here at C3NY); “The Quick Fix is often the Wrong Fix”; “Be careful making assumptions” — these terrific ideas go on and on.

Be careful making assumptions. I know the author in the article is talking about being careful about making assumptions about your patient. I would add be careful making assumptions when it comes to Step 2 CS preparation. DO NOT believe everything you hear. DO NOT use lists. DO NOT take this exam lightly.

DO refer to Dr. Swartz’s excellent “Top 10 DO’s for USMLE Step 2 CS exam”. We published this as our first blog post, and it is a first-rate place to start.

Yours in excellent Step 2 CS prep,

The team at C3NY

Matthew Callahan

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