What is your ice breaker question for welcoming new patients into your imaging department?

This is a super easy topic to cover and can come before or after you verified the patient’s identity. My course on patient communication at www.SpeakToPatients.com goes into more detail, but for now, let’s assume you have verified that Mr. Billy Jones is in fact the Mr. Jones on the CT request/requisition.

Now what do you say to him? I would go super simple here and say something like, “How has your day been so far?”. This is a nice open ended question that some patients will almost ignore and others can go on for hours about. You will experience the full gamut of responses with this type of question, but it’s also designed to lead you into your next set of questions and elicit more clinical information from the patient that may not have made it onto the CT request form/order. These questions will help ensure that we are doing the right test for the patient. No need to do unnecessary imaging or the wrong exam.What is your ice breaker question for welcoming new patients into your imaging department?