I remember when I was an attending physician, I once saw an elderly woman in her seventies who had diabetic retinopathy and had been blind for a week at the time of her visit. After examining her fundus, I judged that she needed surgery, but the patient was suffering from uremia, and we did not dare to operate on her easily in this case. After repeated requests from the patient’s family, we operated on the patient after repeatedly explaining the risks to the patient. The surgery restored the patient’s vision to 0.1. After the surgery, the patient and her family hugged and cried, saying that she finally saw …… she finally knew what was day and what was night. But unfortunately, a week later this patient passed away due to uremia. Her daughter found me and I was apprehensive, fearing another medical dispute. Surprisingly, her daughter said to me: Doctor, thank you really, my mother left this world with her eyes open, she saw the world and saw her relatives before she left …… This experience gave me a lot of insights and reflections, a decision of our doctors, a choice of treatment plan, may change the patient’s life. If we had insisted on not operating on this patient because of her general condition, would there have been deep regret when she left this life? Doctors are dealing with living individuals, with emotions, experiences, and lives, and the purpose of treating disease is to give them a better life and experience. Full and good communication is the key to achieve the best treatment results. I often wonder if doctors, who use professional language for academic communication every day, use English (or other foreign languages) to keep up with the latest academic advances and perfect their medical skills, are neglecting another language – the language that allows them to communicate with their patients. Some of my colleagues may say, “We all communicate in the same language, what’s the difference? Of course there is. Here are a few insights to share with you: Please describe the disease before introducing the treatment Often patients come to see me and say to me: the doctor told me to get laser, what exactly is the reason for not saying. Every time this happens, I get a little upset in my heart. It is very understandable that doctors in big hospitals are in overload every day. I have three clinics a week and I am too tired to speak at the end of each clinic, but I still insist that I make myself do it by telling each patient in simple words that he can understand: what disease you have, what are the consequences, what is the worst possible, how much you are probably prepared to pay for treatment, etc. I always feel that patients come a long way to see a doctor, not just to get the words “laser”, but to know how their disease will affect their lives. A few words from us may be of great help to him. Despite the busy clinic schedule, we recommend that you introduce the main points of the disease to your patients in simple words. Introduce the treatment and talk more about the purpose Ophthalmology is a department that combines surgery and medicine. Compared with other departments, the treatment methods are diverse, with simple medicines and many high level treatments. Sometimes we tell patients to go for a treatment, and in most cases they have little understanding. Especially when the treatment involves surgery, expensive drugs, and some long-term treatment, patients may be very confused. Because of inadequate communication, many patients make their own decisions. For example, a patient with early PDR was told to undergo total retinal photocoagulation. After photocoagulation once, the patient feels that not only his vision does not improve but his visual function is not as good as before the treatment. With inadequate communication, he may give up the treatment or delay it so much that it causes irreparable visual damage. What we doctors need to do is to tell him what the purpose of this treatment is for the disease you are suffering from and what the consequences will be. This way the patient will cooperate well with the doctor even if he does not understand the medical specialty and even if there is discomfort in the treatment that the patient did not expect. Making the patient understand the purpose of treatment is the key to improving patient compliance and enhancing the effectiveness of treatment. Consider the patient’s overall situation when choosing treatment I often remind myself and my students that every patient we deal with is an individual with parents, children, and loved ones, and we want to give him more than just a good outcome for his disease. It is more important to give him a better life. As I mentioned in the opening paragraph about the patient, the doctor has to understand what the patient wants and we have to give him what is best for him, not what is most in line with the textbook. As an example, the current treatment of choice for macular degeneration is anti neovascularization, but it is expensive, costing more than $10,000 for one treatment and repeated injections, but it does improve visual acuity and gives good vision results. Photodynamic therapy has a very limited effect on improving vision, but the number of treatments is low. For an elderly patient, if his family is not well off, would I choose repeated injections of anti-VEGF drugs to give him the best prognosis for vision, or a few injections followed by photodynamic to stabilize the lesion and terminate treatment? I think I would choose the latter. Because it’s probably the best option for him. We must always remember to not only heal the patient, but more importantly, give him a better life. Therefore, when choosing a treatment, it is important to learn as much as possible about the patient’s condition, ask him a few more questions about the life aspects of the treatment, and consider the whole picture, rather than following a textbook prescription. A doctor should have a “heart”, which I summarize as: love, patience, confidence; benevolence, technology, academics. At present, many doctor-patient disputes are caused by the society, the imperfection of our medical education, and the reason of our doctors. I hope that doctor-patient communication can build a bridge between our hearts and patients, so that our lifelong efforts to refine our medical skills can truly benefit patients, and we should all pay attention to and master this third language.