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Listening skills are crucial in medical care situations: doctors must probe patients for information and also work with teams of other medical professionals whose expertise and perspectives can be valuable. This listening process is especially important to older patients, who are more likely to have multiple health issues and to be juggling a variety of medications. Yet some studies suggest that these patients forget anywhere from 40 to 80 percent of what they are told almost immediately and misremember up to half of what they do retain (Sagon, 2013). “In a doctor’s office, a lot of people, especially older people, feel pressure to get out because they know the doctor is busy and they’re a bit intimidated,” explains one such patient, seventy-eight-year-old Bill Allen (Klein, 2013).

Patients who don’t listen to their doctors are more likely to misunderstand their doctors’ advice, which increases the likelihood of complications and hospitalizations. But poor listening skills aren’t limited to patients—doctors are guilty as well. When doctors don’t listen to their patients, they are more likely to misdiagnose illnesses. These mistakes are costly: poor communication between doctors and patients is cited in at least 40 percent of medical malpractice suits (Landro, 2013).

The field is seeking to change those statistics. Many hospitals, health care systems, and insurers are requiring doctors to receive special training to improve their communication skills, providing advice and skill-building exercises to help them to listen better to their patients and also to teach them to speak in ways that encourage their patients to listen more effectively (Landro, 2013). Candidates for admission at many of the nation’s top medical schools (among them Stanford and UCLA) must demonstrate effective communication skills in a series of short “mini interviews” that test their interpersonal skills and ability to work with others under pressure before they can even be accepted. Those who fail to listen well or who are overly opinionated are considered poor candidates (Harris, 2011).

On elementary school report cards, “Listens well” and “Follows directions” are high praise for young children (Edwards & Edwards, 2009). But somewhere in the years that follow, we stop thinking about listening as a crucial skill. “I listen well” probably isn’t a line on your résumé, like being able to speak German or design an app. Yet professors, employers, and medical professionals often define effective listening as a crucial skill. In fact, listening pioneer Ralph Nichols claimed that listening helps us achieve our most basic human need: to understand and be understood (Nichols, 2006).

In this chapter, we examine the nature of listening—how we hear, process, come to understand, and then respond to others’ communication. We learn why listening is so important and why we so often fail to listen effectively. And we describe tools and techniques you can use every day to become a more effective and competent listener.