Compassionate care: enhancing physician-patient communication and education in dermatology: Part I: Patient-centered communication.

The motivation for developing patient-centered communication stems from a desire to enhance the quality of patient care, fulfill professional competency requirements, reduce medical errors, and improve health outcomes and patient satisfaction. Patient-centered communication skills can optimize the physician-patient relationship without significantly prolonging office visits. We propose a series of practical and generally effective techniques for verbal and nonverbal communication. We also suggest a targeted approach for specific difficult conversations that may occur frequently in the practice of dermatology.