Patient Friendly Language

CHRIS COX: So today, we’re talking about language, patient-centered language or patient-friendly language.

RILEY BASS: Right. The words that you say to a patient can have a big impact on how you build that trusting relationship with them, which, as you definitely, obviously, listened to all of our podcasts previous to this one–

CHRIS COX: All of them.

RILEY BASS: –you’ve heard us talk about the importance of building relationships and establishing trust with your patients. And a lot of that has to do with the words that you’re using.

CHRIS COX: Can you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?

RILEY BASS: Not usually, honestly. But I just give you a thumbs up and encourage you to keep trying.

CHRIS COX: Thank you. I try really hard.

RILEY BASS: Try to encourage positivity in the office.

CHRIS COX: Well, we definitely have a language issue, I believe, in audiology. I’m not the only one thinking about it or that thinks that. We definitely have had kind of our set in the ways thinking in how we speak to our patients, but we’re seeing rapid change in how the health care profession engages with patients and how they talk to patients. And I think that audiology is due for an update to the language that we use with our patients.

RILEY BASS: Right. Here’s the deal, guys. I don’t know if you know this or not, but if you’re an audiologist, you’re probably a little bit of a nerd.

CHRIS COX: Nerd.

RILEY BASS: You’ve definitely had to go to school for quite a long time.

CHRIS COX: Nerd.

RILEY BASS: You’ve had to put in a lot of studying. So you probably know some really big words and some really technical terms for things that could be explained in much simpler terms.

CHRIS COX: Nerd.

RILEY BASS: Chris Cox being the biggest nerd in the audiology community.

CHRIS COX: [SCOFFS] Nerds! I represent that.

RILEY BASS: Don’t act like you’re offended. You’re proud of it.

CHRIS COX: I’m proud of being a nerd. We all know this already.

RILEY BASS: But it’s true. We learn all these words, like cholesteatoma.

CHRIS COX: Mmm, delicious.

RILEY BASS: Superior olivary complex.

CHRIS COX: Mmm, delicious.

RILEY BASS: Do you never say that to a patient? Like, look, there is a problem with your superior olivary complex.

CHRIS COX: I only say that to ones that are somewhat arrogant.

RILEY BASS: Because they’re really not superior.

CHRIS COX: No.

RILEY BASS: I figured that’s where you were going with that one.

CHRIS COX: So we have these words. Spiral ganglion. That’s one of my favorite ones. I don’t know why.

RILEY BASS: I was trying to make more of the ABR pathway things. It’s been a long time since I’ve–

CHRIS COX: Pathway things?

RILEY BASS: The collicula, inferior colliculus, right?

CHRIS COX: Mm-hmm, yeah.

RILEY BASS: That’s one of them.

CHRIS COX: That’s a good one too. So we have all these words. Anatomy. We have the words for the psychoacoustics of things and how we perceive certain aspects of sound. And those are cool to learn, and they’re great for understanding the back end and the science and physiology of our hearing and our brain.

But for the regular layman, non-nerd out there, who’s not as familiar with this specialized language that we’ve spent years and years learning, we got to kind of dumb it down a bit. And I don’t mean dumb it down in a bad way. I mean, we’ve got to tone it down a bit, I guess. Dumb it down. Is that wrong language too?

RILEY BASS: Probably.

CHRIS COX: Now I’m going to be really watching my language throughout this whole podcast.

RILEY BASS: We don’t want to dumb anything to our patients. We want to make things easy to understand for them.

CHRIS COX: We want our message to be clear, 100%.

RILEY BASS: Right. How many times have you been listening to somebody talk, and they’re talking about a theory or an idea that’s way over your head, and you just stop listening because you have no idea what they’re talking about.

CHRIS COX: I’ve done that many a time.

RILEY BASS: Just maybe once or twice. At least when I’m talking, you do that.

CHRIS COX: What?

RILEY BASS: Eyes glaze over.

CHRIS COX: Did you say glazed donuts?

RILEY BASS: Yes.

CHRIS COX: Oh, my gosh. I’m so excited right now.

RILEY BASS: We are going to go get some as soon as we’re done with this podcast. Well, we’re steamrolling ahead.

[APPLAUSE]

CHRIS COX: Let’s get done. OK. c So we’re going to look at a few things today as far as the language, and these are just some examples of– by no means is it an exhaustive list. But our purpose for this is to get you thinking in a different way. Thinking about the words that we’re using now, what we’ve used traditionally, and how we need to look at patient-friendly language in the future.

RILEY BASS: Right. You know what sucks?

CHRIS COX: What sucks?

RILEY BASS: Losing things.

CHRIS COX: Mmm, yeah, I hate losing things too.

RILEY BASS: Losing your keys, losing your cell phone.

CHRIS COX: Losing yourself in a big donut. Actually, that’s pretty nice, but–

RILEY BASS: Losing your hearing.

CHRIS COX: That is pretty bad, I imagine. I don’t have hearing loss, thank goodness, at this point. But I’m sure it’s coming soon.

RILEY BASS: Probably, with listening to, you know, at 11 all the time.

CHRIS COX: Without HPDs.

RILEY BASS: Just the word loss, in general, is negative though. It’s something that has a negative connotation. And losing, just in the essence of the word, is taking something away.

And so when you tell a patient that they have hearing loss, you’re saying that something has been taken away from them. So you’re starting the conversation in a negative place. And then what do you have to do?

CHRIS COX: Hopefully, you’re able to add some positivity to it. But you’re starting yourself off on a kind of a negative connotation. Loss, hearing loss. You’re right. That word is just a– it doesn’t drum up any positive feelings for most people.

RILEY BASS: Especially the words that we use to describe levels of hearing loss, like severe, profound.

CHRIS COX: But what about mild? Mild is– oh, mild must be not that bad.

RILEY BASS: I mean, when it comes to taco sauce, yeah.

CHRIS COX: That’s the weak stuff, right? It’s not that big a deal. It doesn’t hurt.

RILEY BASS: Whenever you’re telling a patient that they have a severe hearing loss, one, they probably are aware that they’re having some level of difficulty. And two, just using that word severe almost scares people. I mean, would you be scared if you got told– if you got told. Would you be scared if you were told that you had a severe ailment of some type?

CHRIS COX: Of course. And there are people out there that would argue that there is something severe about it, that there is something profound about the hearing loss that this person has, and that they need to do something about that. And maybe so.

RILEY BASS: Well, absolutely. They do need to do something about it. That’s why we have jobs.

CHRIS COX: That’s right. But I think that argument is, if they’ve got a severe loss, if they’ve got a profound loss, they know that. And if they don’t, then there’s some other issues going on there in the form of denial that need to be overcome first.

But we do hear that argument, right? Well, it is severe. It is something that should be addressed.

But if we step back and we look at it from kind of more of an objective standpoint, it’s not really a great discussion to be having with somebody, like you said, when we were talking about diagnosing something that’s severe.

And then it helps us again, as we start off with the idea of hearing loss, it adds another notch to the negative side of things, right? So when you think of hearing loss, when you think of the degrees of hearing loss, and we’ve been describing them now for decades in this manner, it’s no wonder that there is such a negative connotation around this idea of not being able to hear as well as either you used to or, if you’ve been born with some sort of hearing loss, not being able to hear like a, quote, unquote, “normal” person can hear.

RILEY BASS: “Normal” being very subjective.

CHRIS COX: And we both did air quotes when we did that. That doesn’t come across on the podcast here, but we both did air quotes.

RILEY BASS: Looking into one of our sister professions, I think there’s a good example of the way that that language can be translated into the optical world.

CHRIS COX: Yeah, for sure. Optometry. When you can see far away, but not see near, what’s that called?

RILEY BASS: Farsighted.

CHRIS COX: Farsighted. Yeah, that was a good cartoon by Gary Larson back in the ’80s and ’90s.

RILEY BASS: Well, I happen to be pretty farsighted and that’s how it’s always been described to me. And it’s never been described to me as, you have a severe vision loss, even though I can tell when I take my glasses and contacts off that I do have a severe vision loss, because I can’t find my glasses if I don’t know where they already are.

I’m, like, the whole Scooby-Doo thing with Velma. When she would lose her glasses and she would have to just feel around, that’s literally what happens to me. I have to just feel around and try to find them.

CHRIS COX: OK, so farsighted. If you can see far, but not see near, you’re farsighted. If you can see near, but not far, that’s nearsighted. What is the focus on that?

RILEY BASS: It’s on what you are able to do, not what you are unable to do.

CHRIS COX: Right. And that, to me, is a huge difference in what they’re doing versus what we’re doing with our patients. Then you also consider even their prescriptive numbers that they use, like the 20/20 or 20/100 or 20/400, whatever, you know, that’s a degree. It’s describing some sort of degree. If you’re 20/100, then that means that you have to be–

RILEY BASS: You probably need some glasses.

CHRIS COX: You probably need glasses. You see at 20 feet what a “normal,” quote, unquote, air quote, person sees at 100 feet. So it gives you kind of an idea of where you stand and the clarity of your hearing– or I’m sorry– clarity of your seeing. Vision? What is it?

RILEY BASS: Can you tell we’re audiologists? We just keep talking about hearing.

CHRIS COX: But it doesn’t necessarily have any sort of connotation, like severe, profound, moderate.

RILEY BASS: My vision’s at 20 over 600.

CHRIS COX: God!

RILEY BASS: Right? And I know–

CHRIS COX: No wonder you can’t see anything.

RILEY BASS: I know that that’s really terrible. And if that was a hearing loss, it would be a severe hearing loss. But saying, oh, I’m 20/600 doesn’t sound quite as horrible as saying, I have a severe vision loss.

CHRIS COX: That’s right.

RILEY BASS: That sounds scary. Like, I drive a car. I have a driver’s license.

CHRIS COX: So you see at 20 feet what a, quote, unquote, “normal” person sees at 600 feet.

RILEY BASS: Right.

CHRIS COX: That’s like a quarter of a mile away, isn’t it?

RILEY BASS: I don’t know.

CHRIS COX: That’s like a billboard.

RILEY BASS: But I mean, like, if you’re in the woods and there’s a bear, I’m not–

CHRIS COX: To you, it just looks like a smudge.

RILEY BASS: I’m going to be like, oh, look at that cute little bunny 600 feet away and it’s actually a bear about to maul my face off.

[BEAR ROARING]

CHRIS COX: Yeah. Well, I’ll be far away if that ever happens. So if we look at that and we discuss– we’ve already discussed that negative–

RILEY BASS: Do you want to stutter one more time in that sentence?

CHRIS COX: I’m thinking about this bear gnawing your face off, and me just, like, [PEW SOUND].

RILEY BASS: You have bad vision too, though, so that actually is not an accurate–

CHRIS COX: But it’s not as bad as that. I think mine’s 20/70 or something like that. Anyway.

RILEY BASS: Gaw.

CHRIS COX: Gaw. Rawr! If we compare optometry and audiology, where their language is either positive-focused or just neutral-focused versus ours which is negative-focused, so it’s the idea of loss, or in a named degree, like profound or severe, then we can kind of see that there’s this big difference in the language that we’re using with those patients.

RILEY BASS: Just the way things are right now, that is the industry standard. There’s not a different way. There’s not a neutral– I don’t know how many patients I’ve had come in and tell me, they’re like, oh, my last doctor told me I had 70% hearing loss. I’m like, what does that even mean?

CHRIS COX: Yeah, they say that all the time.

RILEY BASS: I, still to this day, have never seen the actual calculation where you calculate, like, what percentage of hearing loss. I’m sure it’s probably existing somewhere, but it was never taught to me in school.

CHRIS COX: Yeah, some people, I think, take that [INAUDIBLE] score from the [INAUDIBLE] testing and maybe think that that’s what loss there is. I don’t know, but I hear that all the time as well. And people do just grab onto that, for some reason.

And like you said, by no means are we here to challenge the status quo in that we need to reteach all of these different things, like hearing loss and the degree of hearing loss.

RILEY BASS: We’re going to completely revolutionize the industry.

CHRIS COX: We’re going to completely just revolutionize.

RILEY BASS: Can you believe it, guys? We are going to be the revolutionary voice of audiology.

CHRIS COX: Yeah. Well, really, that’s what it’s about. Not we, as in just you and myself, but everybody that’s listening to this right now. We may not need to change this right now, but just looking at these words and how we use them is going to– that’s why we’re doing this. That’s why we’re talking about it today, because it’s important for the future of our interactions with our patients.

I have seen, actually, with some audiograms out there, that they will have kind of the normal range at the top, 25 and up. But below that, they don’t have the degrees on there. They don’t have mild to profound. They have, needs help. So they’re not giving it any sort of degree, they’re giving it a needs help. It’s just a big old section of the areas that they’re going to need help with. And the good news is that we can do something about that, for the most part.

RILEY BASS: What? We can? No way.

CHRIS COX: For sure.

RILEY BASS: You know how we do that?

CHRIS COX: How do we do that?

RILEY BASS: With hearing aids.

[DRAMATIC MUSIC]

CHRIS COX: Hearing aids.

RILEY BASS: Yuck. What a gross word.

CHRIS COX: All right, so we’re talking about negative words, like hearing loss. And how about old words, like hearing aids?

RILEY BASS: Your favorite word to use, beige banana.

CHRIS COX: Yeah, the big beige banana. Yeah, everyone thinks hearing aids are those big beige bananas, the ones that came out in, like, the ’60s or whatever.

RILEY BASS: You know what made me mad? Well, it’s just been a couple years ago, but the movie Pitch Perfect came out, and there’s–

CHRIS COX: Never seen it.

RILEY BASS: –Fat Amy and she’s going to the career fair.

CHRIS COX: That’s rude.

RILEY BASS: –and she goes to– that’s her name.

CHRIS COX: I’m sure her parents called her that.

RILEY BASS: She goes to this group of people with hearing loss and they’re wearing these giant BTE hearing aids. And they don’t even have custom molds on them. They have the little pop in things. And they’re so atrocious. And then I’m like, that’s so unrealistic of what a deaf community would be on campus. That stuff has been made into these very simple, sleek, small devices, that it just made me super mad.

I love the movie Pitch Perfect. I’m going to be super honest with you guys. But c that made me mad that they had these big honking hearing aids on these people in the movie.

CHRIS COX: But that’s part of that stereotype that keeps being perpetuated by the movie industry and whoever else out there that pushes that forward. Hearing aids are obviously very different from when that was. And we have all this new technology out there that definitely makes that smaller than they were back in the ’60s.

But we keep using the word, and I think it’s a branding issue. I think it’s one of those things where it’s been used for these things that go on your ear and amplify sound. And those, like smartphones, or like televisions, or even cars, those have changed, but we keep using this old brand word for it.

RILEY BASS: The thing we probably do the least on our phones these days is what a phone is for.

CHRIS COX: Right. Talk on the phone.

RILEY BASS: They’re like our little handheld computers, not our phones anymore.

CHRIS COX: Mom’s calling again. Ignore.

RILEY BASS: Wow.

CHRIS COX: Text back, hey, Mom, what’s going on?

RILEY BASS: Can’t talk.

CHRIS COX: Just wanted to talk, son. Awww.

RILEY BASS: Awww.

CHRIS COX: It’s so sad. Anyway.

RILEY BASS: Why are you ignoring your mom’s phone calls? That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.

CHRIS COX: My mom doesn’t call. I call her.

RILEY BASS: I always answer when my mom calls.

CHRIS COX: Well, cool.

RILEY BASS: Because I’m a good daughter.

CHRIS COX: OK, so let’s go back to this.

RILEY BASS: We digress.

CHRIS COX: So we have– if we look at hearing aids and the use of the word hearing aids, everyone always thinks of that beige banana. What do you think of whenever I say the word Sony Walkman?

RILEY BASS: I think of the 1980s music video.

CHRIS COX: Which one?

RILEY BASS: All of them.

CHRIS COX: All of them.

RILEY BASS: I know it’s not a Walkman, but I also think of John Cusack in Say Anything, where he’s got the boombox over his head.

CHRIS COX: That is not a Walkman.

RILEY BASS: No. But I mean, that would never happen today.

CHRIS COX: Why not?

RILEY BASS: Because nobody has boomboxes anymore.

CHRIS COX: They have Bluetooth speakers. You can–

RILEY BASS: But they’re little. You can hold it in one hand up.

CHRIS COX: Or just Snap it to her.

RILEY BASS: You could– I was going to say, he would just Snapchat her from– he’s like, hey, look at me outside your house on Snapchat.

CHRIS COX: Creepy. Anyway, so when you think of the ’80s, right? And I think of in Back to the Future, where Marty McFly goes to his dad’s house.

RILEY BASS: I’ve never seen Back to the Future.

CHRIS COX: Oh, sorry, I don’t want to give you any spoilers alerts then. So if you haven’t seen it by now, good grief.

RILEY BASS: No worse than that I ruined Pitch Perfect for you.

CHRIS COX: You totally did. I’m never going to watch that movie anyway.

OK. So think of that, Walkman, all right? That’s this old term. Well, did you know that Sony came out with a Walkman two years ago?

RILEY BASS: Only because you told me this.

CHRIS COX: Yeah, it was a new Walkman.

RILEY BASS: And you bought one?

CHRIS COX: No, I didn’t. But whenever they say Walkman, people expect the cassette tapes with the little tiny headphones with the foam covers over the ears and a wire between that, right? And Sony’s Walkman really didn’t do too well.

RILEY BASS: What?

CHRIS COX: You didn’t hear about it.

RILEY BASS: No.

CHRIS COX: Nobody else heard about it. They were trying to go off of an old brand name, Walkman, from the ’80s, but no one’s going to pick that up.

RILEY BASS: Definitely not the phenomenon it was in the ’80s.

CHRIS COX: And they were just trying to grab hold of that. So the point of it is, is that using old language and using old terms can really be–

RILEY BASS: Detrimental.

CHRIS COX: Detrimental. That’s a good word. Very nice. Those big words. So for the people out there that don’t know what detrimental is.

RILEY BASS: It just implies that something is negative, has negative consequences for you. Consequences are things that happen after something else happens.

CHRIS COX: OK, now I get it.

RILEY BASS: Now we’re good?

CHRIS COX: Totally.

RILEY BASS: OK. Detrimental.

CHRIS COX: Crystal clear. So this hearing aid idea, old word, old language, branding, negative, bad vibes.

RILEY BASS: Gross.

CHRIS COX: Bad vibes. So what do we do? What do we use in place of that? We’re in a new age. We’re in the digital age.

RILEY BASS: What?

CHRIS COX: We are in the connected age, in the wireless age.

RILEY BASS: Things are just so technological these days.

CHRIS COX: In the past five years, there’s been a great evolution in the hearing health care industry around these hearing devices. And I use hearing devices. One of the things I’m working on is trying to change my language from saying hearing aids to some of the alternatives.

RILEY BASS: Like what, Chris?

CHRIS COX: Like hearing instruments, hearing devices. One of my favorites is hearing tech, because we’re really moving towards this convergence between the hearing aid industry, in the traditional sense, and this technology industry, you know, the wearables, and now, more specifically, the hearables, that are being used kind of as, like we’ve traditionally been using hearing aids, and again, using that in the traditional term.

Now there’s this convergence and they’re coming together in the form of many different types of hearables. And as we see this technology merge together, it’s our opportunity to finally be able to take that negative stigma off of the hearing loss and the hearing aids that we’ve been hearing about over the last 20, 30 years.

RILEY BASS: Promoting advocacy and promoting the cool things that these technological devices can do. And I know that we’ve seen employees that work here in our office that have said, I want some of these. I don’t even have hearing loss, but this is so cool. How awesome is it to be able to stream your phone and your music into your ears directly and not have to have a headphone jack or earbuds in. You can just do it automatically and it’s way easier.

CHRIS COX: Yeah, it’s super exciting to see that.

RILEY BASS: It’s cool stuff. It’s a lot cooler than the beige bananas.

CHRIS COX: And that’s why it made you so mad when you were watching Pitch Perfect, because you knew that it’s better than that. It’s way better than that. And it’s not represented well for whatever reason.

But it’s our job, as audiologists, as the experts, as the professionals, to put the word out there that there is a new game in town when it comes to hearing health care, and it doesn’t mean that you have to walk around with that big old piece of plastic right here.

RILEY BASS: And can’t we just be honest? That beige doesn’t match anybody’s skin.

CHRIS COX: Nobody’s skin.

RILEY BASS: You might as well get friggin’ hot pink, if you’re going to get anything, because–

CHRIS COX: No kidding. Doesn’t even match KEMAR’s skin and he’s supposed to be the average guy, right?

RILEY BASS: The dummy guy? The puppet guy?

CHRIS COX: Yes, the puppet guy with the supple ears. So we’ve got this new technology. We’ve got a new outlook from the consumers out there. So what can we do for our future? How do we engage our patients to build that trust and to start us off on the right foot when we’re talking with our patients?

RILEY BASS: That’s a great question, Chris. You know–

CHRIS COX: Thank you.

RILEY BASS: –one thing I really like to do is read books. And by read books, I mean listen to them being read to me by someone else.

CHRIS COX: Nerd.

RILEY BASS: But one of the books that has been extremely impactful, and I think it’s a book that every audiologist should read, is The Language of Trust, Michael Maslansky. There’s four main things that you need to do to establish that trust with people.

CHRIS COX: Just four?

RILEY BASS: That’s it. It’s four. It’s so easy. Number one, be positive. Chris, what have we been talking about this entire podcast?

CHRIS COX: Focusing on the positive–

RILEY BASS: Great.

CHRIS COX: –and not the negative.

RILEY BASS: I’m glad you remember what we’ve been talking about for the last 20 minutes or so.

CHRIS COX: All right, what did you say?

RILEY BASS: What?

CHRIS COX: That’s what I thought.

RILEY BASS: Number two, be plain-spoken. It’s easy to get caught up in those fancy words that we use to talk about different types of medical conditions, anatomy, physiology, that kind of stuff. But most of our patients don’t know what your superior olivary complex is.

CHRIS COX: It is delicious.

RILEY BASS: Or your inferior colliculus.

CHRIS COX: All right, so let’s stop talking about physiology.

RILEY BASS: And let’s talk about plausibility. Make sense. Be real. Make sure that your patients know that you’re talking to them in their language and that the things that you are offering are real. Going in and telling your patient, we’ve got this magnificent new hearing machine and it’s going to make everything 100%, 100% of the time.

CHRIS COX: Why do you have a Southern accent when you do that?

RILEY BASS: I don’t know. I just overcommitted.

CHRIS COX: [INAUDIBLE]. Yeah, OK.

RILEY BASS: I overcommitted.

CHRIS COX: That’s fine.

RILEY BASS: I was just playing a role.

CHRIS COX: OK, I got it. It sounded good. Just wanted to make sure that you didn’t have a stroke or anything.

RILEY BASS: I am from that part of the country.

CHRIS COX: Well, being plausible’s really about the realistic expectations behind things. You can say you’ve got– your hearing abilities have changed over the past five years, but we have this hearing technology that’s going to be able to help you in the situations that you told me were important to you. But not making it so pie in the sky that it just seems unbelievable.

RILEY BASS: Mmm, pie.

CHRIS COX: Mmm, pie.

RILEY BASS: And going off of what you just said, making sure it’s personal. Every patient’s not coming in with the same. Every single patient you see is going to have different needs, different wants, different situations that they’re in, and making sure that you are speaking to them personally is going to be your best bet.

And you might have that patient that’s some type of medical professional or engineer and they want to use those big words and talk about techie fancy stuff and physiological terms, but–

CHRIS COX: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Your words are really too big right now.

RILEY BASS: Tech fancy stuff.

CHRIS COX: Yeah, but you are going to have those people. And you’re right, and you’re spot on when you say that. But there’s a time and place for it.

RILEY BASS: If you would like to read the book The Language of Trust, we happen to have a few extra copies laying around in our office up here. So send us an email or a tweet if you would like a copy and I would be happy to get one out in the mail for you as soon as possible.

CHRIS COX: Did we get all four things?

RILEY BASS: Yeah.

CHRIS COX: Positive.

RILEY BASS: Plain-spoken.

CHRIS COX: Plain-spoken.

RILEY BASS: Plausible.

CHRIS COX: Plausible.

RILEY BASS: And personal.

CHRIS COX: And personal. Oh, yeah. That’s four.

RILEY BASS: That’s the fourth.

CHRIS COX: The Language of Trust.

RILEY BASS: Right. One more time?

CHRIS COX: Just wanted to review. Wait, hold on. What is it?

RILEY BASS: Positive.

CHRIS COX: Positive.

RILEY BASS: Plain-spoken.

CHRIS COX: Plain-spoken.

RILEY BASS: Plausible.

CHRIS COX: Plausible.

RILEY BASS: Personal.

CHRIS COX: Personal.

RILEY BASS: Those four things, the four Ps, of The Language of Trust.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

All right, guys. I know that you probably have patients to see and homework to do and tests to study for, so we will let you get back with your week. But thank you so much for tuning in.

CHRIS COX: Just remember your language is very important, especially when speaking with your patients. Leave the negative behind. Leave the old behind and start looking at the new ways of interacting with your patients.

RILEY BASS: Believe it or not, we do know how to do this and are able to do it. Sometimes we just like to have a little fun with you guys here on The pAudcast. Hopefully, you laugh, right?

CHRIS COX: I laugh on the inside.

RILEY BASS: I laugh when I listen to our podcast.

CHRIS COX: You listen to our podcast?

RILEY BASS: I do. I’m the main subscriber. I leave all the feedback and everything.

CHRIS COX: Reviews. You leave all the reviews?

RILEY BASS: Yeah. It would be great if you guys could get on that and help us.

CHRIS COX: Yeah. Because all of Riley’s reviews are pretty much the same.

RILEY BASS: Riley’s great. Chris, ehhh, not so much.

CHRIS COX: That was you?

RILEY BASS: Yeah, every single time.

CHRIS COX: I’ve been crying every night.

RILEY BASS: I use fake names to throw you off.

CHRIS COX: Riley Bass.

RILEY BASS: Yes. I spell Riley every different way that you can.

CHRIS COX: With a W.

RILEY BASS: Yes.