Communication skills of the 21st century physician

To follow up on a recent post about studying humanities in college: 

Unfortunately there are a few salient clinical skills that cannot be taught in medical school.  Science, yes; how to use tools, yes; how to talk to patients, nope.  I don't know how true this is, but I heard that doctors who do not have good rapport with their patients are more likely to be sued.  I believe that the clinician-patient bond is sacred and based on trust, without which the medical profession will disintegrate.  I was very stressed while preparing to apply to school because today's medical students are expected to be superhuman.  Now that I am in and 1/4 of the way done (!), I am taking a breather to focus on clinical skills.

Thankfully, both studying art history and working on a clinical study helped me with people skills.  When I start clerkships in a year, everything I say and do in front of other people will be subject to scrutiny.  Being extremely careful about what comes out of my mouth takes a lot of effort!  This excerpt is from an editorial in a medical journal.  Finding a person that fits this description is like finding a needle in a haystack, but fortunately there are a lot of haystacks in the world.

So what communication skills will be required of the fully evolved 21st century physician? The physician will, of course, be fluent in standard clinical language, including ordinary medical terminology and the delicate phrases of care and compassion. The physician will be adept at translating medical jargon into comprehensible lay terms, knowing how to defuse words, such as obese or psychotic, that might cause alarm or hurt feelings. The physician will know how to explain statistical concepts both accurately and intelligibly with the patience and fortitude to answer patients' questions about all things evidence-based, even the physician's own competence.  

The physician will know the highly technical vocabulary of relevant research agendas well enough to encourage patients to get involved. The physician will also keep up with popular culture, tracking popular direct-to-patient communications and incorporating them into the clinical dialogue. In addition, and most importantly, the physician will have virtuoso data entry and retrieval skills, with an ability to talk, think, listen, and type at the same time rivaling that of court reporters, simultaneous interpreters, and journalists on deadline. The physician will do all of this efficiently and effectively through dozens of clinical encounters a day, each one couched in a slightly different vernacular.  

That's some physician. And it should escape no one's notice that it is a physician whose talents are traditionally undervalued among medical school applicants.

Source: Zuger, A. Talking to Patients in the 21st CenturyTalking to Patients in the 21st Century. JAMA. 2013;309(22):2384.