Communication is essential to human interaction and development. Communication is a key skill that is explored, practiced and examined in medical schools across the world. It constitutes a core competency of how we are assessed in our continuing medical careers. It is well recognised that poor communication is often the root cause of many complaints and critical incidents, which lead to patient harm, increased length of stay and poor staff morale.
Key to good communication is enabling a patient to be at the centre of decision-making about their treatment. All efforts must be taken to facilitate patients’ making fully informed decisions about immediate and on-going care needs and this may involve an assessment of capacity where necessary. If required extra support for patients must be provided to assist them in making an independent decision, but occasionally this is not possible and a decision must be made in the best interests of the individual concerned.

There is an increasing availability of decision aids, which can be utilised to make it easier for patients and clinicians to reach a shared-decision about the most appropriate way to progress their care and use of these tools should be encouraged. The validity of consent can be questioned in the event of a patient complaint.

It is inevitable that not all episodes of communication will be straightforward and conflict is something that all professionals will encounter at some point in their career. It is therefore essential that strategies to recognise, acknowledge and resolve conflict are part of the communication skill set.