Do I Need To Be Good At My Interpersonal Skills To Be A Psychiatrist?

Hi Gaurav,
Interpersonal skills (sometimes we call it soft skills) decide 80% of a particular job offer and only 15-20% of decisions are made on core expertise. So you could well imagine, soft skills are key not only to become or as a Psychiatrist but also for any profession today.
To improve your soft skills, I'd suggest to try the followings:
1) Talk to your friends, family members to give an honest opinion about you. You must know how you are perceived outside. Do people think good/positive about you or negative about you. If they say, they think you are the best person and all good, then I'd say you don't have close friends or family members. We all have negatives and it's vital to know what are our negatives.

2) Take some courses on how to study body language and face. Just by looking how a person talks, walks, makes eye contact, how the hand shake feels, one can get lots of inputs. This makes you ready to react in a compassionate manner.

3) One important aspect while communicating with a person sitting next/ close to you is to make proper eye contact. This depends how you make somebody seat across a table, how confident are you on the topic of discussion, your intention and interest. But a suitable and confident eye contact is the minimum requirement in a conversation.

4) Always keep the discussion to the point and make things light with some form of humor. This takes off the stress from you and also from the person you are talking with .

5) To talk in a polite way and compassion makes the person quite well accepted. Talk to a person as if he is the only person in this world you are talking to. I make a point here for complete attention. If I talk to you and then talk on phone or go through pages of a book at the same time, obviously it doesn't leave a good impression. This is to make the other person feel that you care to solve his/her problem and you need to hear to work together towards a solution.

6) Try to make things organised and to the point. Most often the person who talks to you must feel in the end, after spending time talking to you he has something in his pocket i.e. he knows the next steps, he feels better, he has better directions. He must feel that he has some improvements prior to the stage "talking to you".

7) Don't judge people s it's impossible to realize what they have gone through. Then you can always talk to anybody with interest, respect as an individual. even if it's a child, he has to be listen to with respect like an individual. This helps both parties to really solve problems in a meaningful way.

8) Ask people to fill anonymous forms about your soft skills and be sincere to understand and improve on those points.
9) Meditate 10-15 min / day. It helps run our micro machines well.
10) Learn something new and believe in yourself.

I hope these 10 points could help you improve your soft skills.

Get back to me if you need further help.

Best,
Ajit

Hi Gaurav,

Pretty interesting question.

I hope you know, Psychiatrists are doctors who deal with Mental health issues.
These are clients who are already having some issues, and to deal with them one needs to empathise with them rather being sympathetic.
For these clients more than the medications, important is the doctors approach, body language, etc.

Please note that if the doctor is able to manage the client and make him comfortable at the first sight, half his battle is won. The client then automatically builds a rapport with the doctor and is willing to listen.

This Interpersonal skills is highly important in Humanitarian services.

Interpersonal skills are related to:

• Communication ( Verbal and Non-verbal)
• Expressing ones self
• Listening skills
• Approach

Please note that during the course, when you touch on therapy a little of the interpersonal skills would be touch based. But prior to that, you need to self introspect.

• Look at the way you approach issues, or
• how you react to people who come up with an issue,
• how do you react when someone all of a sudden spoils the entire plan.
• How do you convey the hurt feelings,
• how do you react to people unnecessary reactions and irritations??

An answer to the baove questions, will give you a clear picture of your interpersonal skills.
If you are the one getting impatient and react rudely, then you need to check out and be more careful.

Rather than learning skills, here I would recommend, being **Mindful.
Be aware of your senses, and automatically your reaction changes.**

It does sound a task, but mind you wherever you learn the skills from, unless and until, you develop a sense of watching your senses,, these skills will not develop.

Other than that, you need to start developing a lot of patience and a being away from the situation kind of attitude. If you begin to personalize each and everything, you are bound to loose yourself. Develop patience.

Last but not the least is Diary Writing. It is like a checklist on yourself. In the long run, it will help you in dealing with situations, as it becomes a key to your visualization.

Keep practicing. Initially it may seem tough.
Wish you good luck................

Thanks Gaurav for putting up a query.

Your question is, Do I need to be good at my interpersonal skills to be a Psychiatrist?

My answer is "YES." Interpersonal skills are crucial to be a psychiatrist.

Since Ajit and Meghna already provided detailed answer to your query, I will cover other aspects to enlighten you with new perspective on interpersonal skills.

Psychiatrists need to demonstrate knowledge. Attitude and skills necessary to develop and maintain appropriate interpersonal therapeutic relationship and communicate effectively with patient, families, and other professional colleagues.

Psychiatrists need to utilize interpersonal skills to create effective environment for patient and maintain professional relationships. Following skills are necessary:
- Interviewing skills
- Communication skills (Ability to communicate clearly with patient in a language patient speaks)
- Relationship skills (ability to maintain relationship with patients, families and other professionals)
- Empathy

Hope this help you. If you still have queries and want to have further discussion with me, feel free to write to me or talk to me. I would be very happy to interact with you.

Best Wishes,
Apurvakumar