It is notoriously hard to get a place on a university medical course — but once you've gained that place and graduated from your many challenging years of study, you will still need to find a job at the end of it. Having excellent skills as a physician is fantastic and so is having a wide knowledge base, but if you really want to impress hiring managers and fill up that job vacancy, then you'll need to impress with your ability to deal with patients, too. Here's what you need to know.

Why Is This Important?

Of course, there's nothing more important than the actual training you go through as a physician, but in order to be put to practical use, that training and experience will always be filtered through personal interactions with patients. Every person you treat will be relying on your communication skills and so will your colleagues. You'll need to be able to ask the right questions in the right manner to extract the information you need from your patient. Then, you'll need to be able to talk through options and instructions for treatment.

How Can You Improve?

This combination of good communication skills and a personable style, often known in medicine as 'good bedside manner', is not something that every physician starts out with. Oftentimes, it's a muscle trained over time. In any placements or practices you take part in during your studies, you should be paying close attention to how your tone and body language affect your interactions with each patient. Right from the beginning, think about ways you can phrase things and frame information to get best results and refine your language over time. That way, you'll be in good stead already when you step into your first interviews.

What Else Can You Do?

Speak with other physicians you meet, particularly those with a lot of experience, about how they interact with patients. Learn from their experiences as well as your own. You should also train yourself to be adaptive. After all, not every patient will find the same things considerate. Some individuals will need your patience and repeated assurances; others will respond better to direct, short answers. Learn to spot the signs and change the way you approach different patients.

No matter what you do, your own personality will still shine through — and so it should! Nobody is asking you to be an entirely different person. It's just about training yourself to handle the patients you'll encounter with the greatest efficiency and kindness. In the end, it is these things which hiring managers and patients alike will remember about you — not the detailed bullet points of your CV. Reach out to businesses like GP Recruitment Australia to learn more.