The Difference Between Good Doctors and GREAT Doctors

GOOD TO GREAT: THEY HAVE STRONG EDUCATION AND TRAINING

By choosing a doctor who is Board Certified by one of the twenty-four American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) Member Boards, you can feel confident he or she meets nationally recognized standards for education, knowledge, experience and skills to provide high quality care in a specific medical specialty. Board Certification goes above and beyond basic medical licensure. Determining if a particular doctor is Board Certified is fast, free, and easy. Simply visit the ABMS website, register, and plug in the doctor’s name and city.

Mike Lipscomb, MD, an Emergency Room doctor at North Fulton Hospital in Roswell, Georgia and a physician with Apollo MD believes that doctors at the top of their fields have solid educational and training foundations to draw upon as they practice medicine. But Lipscomb also offers a warning.

“I wouldn’t put much weight on the big-name schools,” he says.

He explains that tuition expenses at these elite schools can reach well over $50,000 per year making them unrealistic options for many medical students.

“Many state schools are less than a third of this,” he continues. “High price doesn’t correlate to a better education. Some of the best physicians I know went to large state universities for school, and they made the choice to come out with as little debt as possible.”

“And I wouldn’t put much stock in research,” says Lipscomb. “Being good in the lab doesn’t necessarily correlate to being clinically competent.”

GOOD TO GREAT: THEIR KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE FEED THEIR REASONING

“When seeking a physician for myself or family, I regard credentials as a bare minimum and the physician’s experience as a second layer, depending on the nature of care required,” remarks Adedapo Odetoyinbo, MD, SFHM, Chief Medical Officer and Director of Hospital Medicine at Emory Johns Creek Hospital in Georgia. “Experience plays a key role when the need is more technical in nature or when decisions need to be made quickly in an emergency situation. More important to me than research itself, is the physician’s ability to integrate research results and evidence-based medicine into their everyday practice.”

Odetoyinbo refers to the doctor’s practical ability to decipher a puzzle-to select pieces of knowledge from his or her education and experiences and correctly apply them to the situation at hand. In the physician’s pursuit to protect and restore a patient’s well-being, knowledge enhances reasoning and rational decision-making, and experts agree that some doctors are simply better than others at applying what they know.

GOOD TO GREAT: THEY ARE EXCELLENT COMMUNICATORS

Many of the experts polled remarked that the best of the best have a toolbox full of excellent soft skills-those personal attributes and qualities that enhance an individual’s one-on-one interactions and performance.

“What separates the good doctors from those we consider top docs is their ability to listen to patients-to really hear them and respond to what they are saying,” says Cindy Hardy, a Physician Relations Manager at North Fulton Hospital who worked as a nurse for years.

She notes that master physicians allow patients to set the tempo for the first few minutes of an interaction while listening and gathering valuable information. Only then, do they respond.

A study published in The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association in 2005 (Travaline, Ruchinskas, and D’Alonzo) found that in many cases, effective patient-physician communication can improve a patient’s health as quantifiably as many drugs. Patients who understand their doctors are more likely to acknowledge health problems, understand their treatment options, modify their behavior accordingly, and follow their medication schedules.