There are many different aspects of physician and patient interactions. The ones we know best are those devoted to spoken language. The patient tells the doctor their history. The doctor explains things to the patient. That is all done verbally.

However, there is another important part to the physician-patient interaction, and that is related to body language. Physical cues often provide us with a piece of the story that words do not.

Body language is actually a two-way street. The physician notices things about the patient, and the patient in turn notices things about the physician.

For example, we often take the social smile that an infant develops as a developmental milestone, but it is much more than that. The infant very quickly understands that the parent provides them with food. The parent provides them with diaper changes when they are wet. The parent provides them with comfort when they are upset.

It does not take long for the infant to learn that. An infant makes many facial movements accidentally. One of those happens to be an accidental smile. They very quickly realize that the facial movement makes the parent pay them more attention. Therefore, in order to gain increased attention from the parent, they begin smiling on purpose.

This is the first evidence we have that the child is thinking like a rational human being. They learn that the smile obtains something they want, and they use it to obtain that. It is the first real evidence we have of their ability to process information rationally.

However, we often fail to recognize how much of our interaction with others is based upon body language. There are estimates that as much as 60 to 80 percent of our interactions take things like body posture and facial movements into account.

Interacting with physicians includes things like gestures. It includes eye contact. It includes posture. It includes expressions.

Something simple like eye contact can go a long way. Looking at a patient eye-to -eye conveys a sense of working together. Being at a higher level than the patient can come across as condescending and patronizing.

The use of computers for taking notes has interfered with eye contact significantly. It can make the patient feel that the physician is uninterested. It also results in physicians failing to see what the patient’s reaction is to questions that are asked.

Studies have shown that sitting next to a patient during an exam has positive effects. It increases patient satisfaction. It makes the physician seem more attentive, and it makes the visit seem longer.

Crossing your arms suggests that you are setting up barriers. Checking your watch suggests that you are in a hurry.

If you tell the patient something, but your body language suggests otherwise, patients are more likely to believe the body language.

When we ask a patient to move, we need to observe if they are in pain. We need to see if they looked rushed.

This area is so important that makers of AI chatbots are seeing if there is any way of incorporating this into AI. In the meantime, this is one area where AI fails to reproduce what a physician can do in a one-on-one situation with a patient.

One challenge we should all have is to pay attention to how we react to the body language of others. We may find that there is a needless social cost to not doing so.