https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6123-0956
![Sample our Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing & Allied Health journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5944/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Medicine-Dentistry-Nursing-Allied-Health.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
Professional assertiveness can enable the healthcare provider to confidently share their expertise without seeming authoritarian to the patient. Professional assertiveness is an interpersonal communication skill that helps express opinions or knowledge while respecting similar competencies in others. For healthcare providers, this compares to sharing scientific or professional knowledge with their patients while respecting their person, ideas, and autonomy. Professional assertiveness also connects the patient’s beliefs and values with actual scientific evidence and healthcare system constraints. The definition of professional assertiveness might be easy to understand, but it remains challenging to apply in clinical practice. In this essay, we hypothesize that the practical difficulties healthcare providers encounter with assertive communication stem from their misunderstanding of this style.
Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful to Geneviève Agoues from Université de Montréal for her precious collaboration. The authors would like to thank Mr Kyle Roerick for his professional, comprehensive, and insightful language editing of the manuscript.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Author contributions
Conceptualization, C.R., M.L.T., and I.T.; resources and data, C.R. and M.L.T.; writing – original draft preparation, C.R., M.L.T., and I.T.; writing – review and editing, C.R., M.L.T., B.M., and I.T. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.