An actor walks into a doctor’s office

Dr. Saul Weiner is a physician and researcher at the University of Illinois (Photo: Roberta Dupuis-Devlin)

Researcher Saul Weiner has been sending fake patients , actors, wired for sound , into real doctors’ offices, to learn about what actually happens, especially: How well doctors really listen to their patients.

He’s tallied up what doctors miss (a lot), and how much it costs (ditto).

In today’s episode, we hear what actually happened in one of those “secret shopper” doctor visits , with the doctor and the actor who played his patient reading from the transcript of their visit, and then unpacking what went wrong.

Saul’s research found most doctors were lousy listeners. And: This bad listening is expensive. And: there’s something thrilling about seeing it pinned down, so cleverly and definitively: It’s not just me. And: Jeez, it’s worse than I thought out there.

In this episode, we hear what actually happened in one of those “secret shopper” doctor visits, with the doctor and the actor who played his patient reading from the transcript of their visit, and then unpacking what went wrong. We also hear about how Saul and his colleagues are using these same techniques to help doctors become better listeners.