tool for collecting or giving information. When one is engaged in listening, it is important to direct attention to both the verbal and nonverbal cues provided by the other person. Like many other skills necessary for providing a healthcare service, listening requires conscious effort and constant practice. Your listening skills can be improved and enhanced by developing the following attitudes and skills:  Hear the speaker out.  Focus on ideas.  Remove or adjust distractions.  Maintain objectivity.  Concentrate on the immediate interaction. As a healthcare provider, you will be using the communication process to service a patient’s needs, both short and long-term. To simplify this discussion, short-term needs will be discussed under the heading of “patient contact point.” Long-term needs will be discussed under the heading of “therapeutic communications.” PATIENT CONTACT POINT To give you a frame of reference for the following discussion, the following definitions will clarify and standardize some critical terms:  Initial contact point—The physical location where patients experience their first communication encounter with a person representing, in some role, the healthcare facility.  Contact point—The place or event where the contact point person and the patient meet. The contact point meeting can occur anywhere in a facility and also includes telephone events.  Contact point person—The healthcare provider in any healthcare experience who is tasked by role and responsibility to provide a service to the patient. The contact point person has certain criteria to meet in establishing a good relationship with the patient. Helping the patient through trying experiences is partially the responsibility of all contact point personnel. Such healthcare providers must not only have skills related to their professional assignment, but they must also have the ability to interact in a positive, meaningful way to communicate concern and the desire to provide a service. Consumers of healthcare services expect to be treated promptly, courteously, and correctly. They expect their care to be personalized and communicated to them in terms they understand. The Navy healthcare system is a service system, and it is the responsibility of every healthcare provider to give professional, quality customer service. The significance of the contact point and the responsibility of the personnel staffing this area are important to emphasize. The following message from a former Surgeon General of the Navy reflects the philosophy of the Navy Medical Department regarding contact point interactions. Some of the most frequent complaints received by the Commander, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, are those pertaining to the lack of courtesy, tact, and sympathetic regard for patients and their families exhibited by Medical Department personnel and initial points of contact within Navy Medical facilities. These points of initial patient contact, which include central appointment desks, telephones, patient affairs offices, emergency rooms, pharmacies, laboratories, record offices, information desks, walk-in and specialty clinics, and gate guards, are critical in conveying to the entering patient the sense that Navy Medicine is there to help them. The personnel, both military and civilian, who man these critical areas are responsible for ensuring that the assistance that they provide is truly reflective of the spirit of “caring” for which the Navy Medical Department must stand. No matter how excellent and expert the care in the facility may be, an early impression of nonchalance, disregard, rudeness, or neglect of the needs of patients reflects poorly on its efforts and achievements. Our personnel must be constantly on their guard to refrain from off-hand remarks or jokes in the presence of patients or their families. We must insist that our personnel in all patient areas are professional in their attitudes. What may be commonplace to us may be to a patient frightening or subject to misinterpretation. By example and precept, we must insist that, in dealing with our beneficiaries, no complaint is ever too trivial not to deserve the best response of which we are capable. . . . 2-8