MIND YOUR LANGUAGE: Dr Shubhangi Parkar (in sari), head of the psychiatry department at KEM, conducted a communication workshop for the new resident doctors on Friday. PIC/ALISHA COELHO

Poor communication skills are being blamed for the frequent fights that break between patients' relatives and doctors in government-run hospitals. So, to teach doctors to be more articulate, a communication workshop will now be a mandatory part of their resident orientation programme.

BMC hospitals say that junior doctors, who come to Mumbai from various parts of the country, don't necessarily know the local language. This generally leads to confusion. "Poor communication is one of the root cause of problems in our hospital," said Dr Sanjay Oak, dean of Nair Hospital. "As per court orders, we take interns from Rajasthan, Bihar, West Bengal, etc, who take time to understand the local language.

The doctors, sometimes, also come from a higher social strata than most patients and without meaning to, sometimes communicate badly with the relatives that may also lead to violence," he added.

New resident doctors at KEM Hospital who were ushered in on June 10 are now supposed to tote a manual of good hospital practices, which includes a chapter on effective communication, said Dr M E Yeolekar, dean, KEM Hospital.

Dr Shubhangi Parkar, head of the psychiatry department at KEM, conducted a communication workshop for the new resident doctors on Friday. "Once a patient came to me with a bucket of excreta to be examined. We had told him to collect a stool sample after eight days, but he thought that he had to bring his stool samples of all eight days," she added.

KEM orthopaedic resident Prashant Kittur, who hails from Karnataka, often finds it hard to understand Marathi. "I'm still adjusting to the city and its language. We can't afford to make mistakes, as we deal with patient's life," he said.