Doctors’ smile always matter!

Doctors’ smile always matter!

By Malak Al Bahri

College of Education, English

Once we enter a restaurant for the first time and are welcomed with a warming smile, we will, instinctively, feel comfortable and view the restaurant as “good” before even knowing how “good” their food is. The simple but “golden” rule that “good customer service providers” follow is: “Feed [customers] a smile and they’ll be back for more,” as mentioned in an article published by Mercantile Systems.

The relationship between doctors and patients is akin to that between suppliers and customers. Like customers, patients need to be fed a smile. A smile could be even more important to patients than customers due to the stress illness causes. Undoubtedly, smiling brings about tranquility and delight for both, the one smiling and the one smiling back. Knowing this fact about smiling, I thought about two major questions: First, how often do we see doctors smile to patients in our government hospitals? Second, what could be officially done to make all doctors smile and thus having happy and motivated patients?

When asked the first question, Wafa Al Sinani, a student at SQU, and Manar Al Bohri, a student at MCBS said that according to their experiences, Omani doctors often smile. Justifying her opinion, Manar added, “doctors are sometimes stressed with the unorganized process of work, resulting in having a lot of patients waiting for their turn. Doctors will certainly be in a bad mood.” At the other extreme, Hajer Al- Manthari, a student at Caledonian College, says that she rarely sees doctors smiling.

The previous views indicate that Omani doctors’ smiles are sometimes absent although they studied its benefits for patients treatment. Adbullah Ahmed Al Ramadhani, a medical doctor, gave this reason: “Smiling is not learned but depends on the personality of a person.” It is true that some doctors are cheerful by nature while others are not. However, if we really want our hospitals to be “good customer-service providers,” our doctors should follow the “golden” rule mentioned before. To win patients and make them happy and motivated, all doctors should smile, leaving their personal problems aside. Who does not want pleased patients? Susan Baker, in her article For the Smile-Challenged: Why a Smile Matters, states that “without a welcoming smile, [patients] may decide ‘this isn't going to be good.’” It is to this extent a smile matters! But what should be done to make that possible.

Believing in the importance of smiling for attracting customers, Chinese employees are trained to smile by biting a chopstick. Shockingly enough, in 2006 in Egypt, 24,000 employees were trained to smile as an initiative to develop the quality of the customer services in governmental sectors. Can this be done in our hospitals? According to Hajer, doctors’ smile gives patients hope; as a result, a smile must be there. Manar, however, sees a similar project as a worthless one as “doctors will eventually be stressed with the huge amount of work they want to finish.” I think that there is no harm though in considering such an idea in our medical services development plans.