The effect of veterinarian’s communication skills on the client’s ability to recall information

Abstract

Introduction: Conveying information is an important objective of a veterinary consult. In order to effectively improve the transfer of information, it is important to know which communication factors influence it. This study will explore whether there are significant relations between the communication skills of a veterinarian and the degree of clients to recall veterinary information.

Materials and methods: For this study 30 clients were asked to fill out a feedback form based on their first consult at the division of medical oncology and radiotherapy at the University clinic of companion animals. With this feedback form the clients rate the communication skills of the veterinarian (such as use of language, taking enough time, encouraging clients to ask questions and checking whether the client has understood the information). Four hours after the consult, the clients were called to assess how much information from the consult was recalled, by scoring the amount of keywords the clients were able to reproduce. The presence of significant correlations between how respondents rated the veterinarian’s communication skills and the extent of veterinary information they recalled was analyzed.

Results/conclusions: This study shows that the ability of clients to recall information is significantly lower in the consultations when clients feel less encouraged to ask questions during the consult. Furthermore, there is evidence in this study that aging has an negative impact (≈ -0,266% of the total number of keywords per year) for clients on the ability to recall veterinary information.