Reinforcing the necessary and obvious: doctors should be nice.

Numbers of articles have recently appeared in the lay press regarding the need for physicians to improve their rapport with patients, enhance their caring behaviors, and demonstrate actions that could be described as nice. Nice physicians are patient-centered, demonstrating skills that enable them to understand the patient's perspective, share information, and develop a partnership with patients. In fact, various medical associations have called for students, residents, and practicing physicians to demonstrate professional behaviors that might be indicative of nice, such as honesty, respectfulness, compassion, integrity, sensitivity, responsiveness, and altruism. Unfortunately, however, nice behaviors are not always modeled in academic medical centers. Medical staff members may, on occasion, demonstrate lack of patience, insensitivity, or rudeness that suggests that the coarseness of society has crept too much into our profession. Can the culture of an institution be moved toward embracing nice behaviors? We believe that a culture of nice can be nurtured in our setting by expecting civility, and exhibiting it in all interactions; reinforcing the message of being nice in all forms of verbal and written communication; recognizing Master Clinicians distinguished by their manner and their quality of care; developing methods to measure and reward physicians based on the way they "doctor;" devising innovative ways to integrate training on how to be nice into the educational curricula for both medical students and residents; and recruiting students, residents, faculty, and staff who are most likely to fit into our institutional environment and contribute to our mission in a positive manner.