Doctors urged to mind bedside manners

A seven-figure bequest to a medical school to teach empathy is but one sign of how patients value emotionally engaged doctors.

By Damon Adams, AMNews staff. March 21, 2005.

If you want an idea of how much patients value a pleasant personality in their physician, consider that the Medical College of Ohio's largest individual gift ever, $1.9 million, came with the demand it be used to teach bedside manner.

The Ruth Hillebrand Clinical Skills Center, dedicated by the Toledo school this month, was borne of the estate of a New York psychologist who felt she had bad experiences with rude doctors. As the school told it, Hillebrand's doctor in New York called her late one night and told her she had mesothelioma. He said there was no treatment and no cure. Then he hung up.

Ruth Hillebrand, a Toledo native, died at age 67 in 1994, before she could fulfill her wish to find a way to use her wealth to train physicians in bedside manners. Her brother, handling her estate, had heard that the Medical College of Ohio taught these skills, and contacted the school about contributing money to its program. When he died, also of mesothelioma, in July 2004, Ruth Hillebrand's $1.9 million went to the college's clinical skills program.

The Ohio medical college is hardly the only school teaching physicians how to interact personally with patients. And there are programs in place for practicing physicians to brush up on their personal skills as well. This isn't because patients are saying, en masse, that their doctors are rude. Rather, they say they value physicians who have good bedside manners, which encompasses listening to and answering their questions and showing empathy and compassion when providing care.