TY - JOUR T1 - Thoughts on Communication JF - The Annals of Family Medicine JO - Ann Fam Med SP - 263 LP - 264 DO - 10.1370/afm.551 VL - 4 IS - 3 AU - Paul R. Gordon Y1 - 2006/05/01 UR - http://www.annfammed.org/content/4/3/263.abstract N2 - Living without the ability to communicate is humbling. Time spent on a sabbatical in Florence, Italy, taught me that my outgoing manner, my interactional skills, and my ability to establish rapport, all personality traits and skills that I thought would overcome my inadequacies as a communicator in Italian are not immutable. I gained some understanding of what our nonnative English-speaking patients might feel. I learned the following lessons: (1) be cautious—what appears to be a lack of interest may be a lack of understanding; (2) our perceptions of aptitude may be mistaken if based on patients’ facial expressions and body language; (3) we should not adjust our words and speed of speech just because we think a patient cannot understand what we are saying; and (4) language is an amazingly powerful tool—the inability to communicate transforms us. ER -