[pjc50]

Unsurprisingly, even in medicine doctors who do better at patient communication get better reviews. And there's an entire industry of alternative medicine which is bad at proving efficacy but good at selling it to the patient ...

[trulyme]

I would argue that patient communication is a vital role in healing. Some doctors might get by beeing bad at it, but there should be someone in the system who explains the situation and possible tradeoffs to the patient instead of them. After all, the patient is the single person who is most motivated for healing to succeed. Quite a few doctors never grasp this concept (to be fair, they are similar to many engineers in this), which is a shame.

[astrange]

The placebo effect is so strong that doing nothing convincingly might be all they need.