Tell Me More®

Tell Me More®

Tell Me More® is a quick connection tool that invites patients, and their families, to engage in a conversation to help their healthcare team get to know them beyond their diagnosis. Studies have shown a significant increase in how well healthcare professionals know their patients after using Tell Me More®.

Tell Me More® is available for any care setting, including hospitals, clinics, and schools. If your institution is a Gold Partners Council member, sign up here. If your institution is not yet a Gold Partners Council member, please reach out to Judith Friedland at jfriedland@gold-foundation.org to join.

Tell Me More® can also be used to help interdisciplinary teams build stronger connections. It can be adapted for healthcare corporations to support their employees in creating strong and meaningful connections with patients or customers, as well as their own colleagues, to see the human being who is in front of them.

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Connection is good medicine

First implemented in 2014, the goal of Tell Me More® is simple: to allow patients, caregivers, and hospital staff to connect with each other on a more human level.

Tell Me More® prompts a student, volunteer, or other healthcare team member to engage a patient or family member in a conversation. Meaningful details are written down on a poster and, with the patient’s permission, hung on the hospital wall. The Tell Me More® poster allows all healthcare team members who enter the room to connect more easily with the patient, which promotes a culture of kind, safe, trustworthy care.

Case Example

Gold Partners Council members Northwell Health and the Zucker School have been leaders in implementing Tell Me More®.

This inspiring video shows how one artist uses the Gold Foundation’s communication tool Tell Me More® at Northwell Health’s Lenox Hill Hospital.

Watch a webinar with Dr. Alice Fornari and Dr. Taranjeet Ahuja who explain how they have used Tell Me More® with students at the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell. They have also been leaders in studying the impact of Tell Me More®, and many of their published studies are listed below.

Since this webinar was produced, Dr. Fornari and Dr. Ahuja have expanded Tell Me More® to fourth-year critical care clinical rotations. In 2025, all graduating Zucker School medical students had used Tell Me More® with a patient or family member.

Testimonials

“When I took a few extra minutes to learn about the patient’s story, it helped me focus on what I love about my job instead of all the paperwork and scheduling and the things that make it feel like work. The patients aren’t work, they are my inspiration every day.”

“Even if just for one second, it encourages everyone to see a patient as an individual and not just a condition that we want to treat and discharge home.”

“The program is unique in that it encourages the opportunity to visit with patients, just to talk and hold their hands and share stories, and not have to examine them or do procedures on them.”

Research

The impact of Tell Me More® has been studied at hospitals and in medical schools.

A 2024 study in the Journal of Patient Experience showed a significant increase in how well healthcare professionals reported knowing their patient after using Tell Me More®. For example, before using Tell Me More®, 66 percent of the healthcare team members agreed or strongly agreed that “I know very well what my patient believes is important in their care.” After using Tell Me More®, that number rose to 80 percent.

From a 2024 study in Journal of Patient Experience by Bryana Belin and colleagues

Sampling of Tell Me More® studies:

Tell Me More® As A Tool for Provider Connectedness With Hospitalized Patients: A Mixed-Methods Study Journal of Patient Experience, August 2024, Bryana Belin, Ishi Aron, Shyam Bhagat, Alice Fornari, Taranjeet K Ahuja

Enhancing patient-centered care for limited English proficiency patients through Tell Me More®: A student-driven initiative to explore the patient as a person and develop students’ communication skills. Patient Experience Journal, November 2022, Angelia Liu, Alicia W. Leong, Alice Fornari, Taranjeet Kalra Ahuja

Tell Me More®: A medical student focused humanistic communication model to enhance student professional identity formation through meaningful patient encounters Patient Education and Counseling, July 2021, Tanzim Bhuiya, Xiaoyue Zhong, Gabrielle Pollack, Alice Fornari, Taranjeet Kalra Ahuja

Tell Me More: Promoting compassionate patient care through conversations with medical students Patient Experience Journal, November 2018, Danielle Qing, Anjali Narayan, Kristin Reese, Sarah Hartman, Taranjeet Kalra Ahuja, Alice Fornari

History 

Learn more about the origin of this wonderful program, which was developed by Gold Humanism Honor Society members at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai.

Get started

Tell Me More® is available for any care setting, including schools, hospitals and clinics, for Gold Partners Council members of certain levels.

If your institution is already a Gold Partners Council member, sign up here to begin the process of using Tell Me More®.

If your institution is not yet a Gold Partners Council member, please reach out to Judith Friedland at jfriedland@gold-foundation.org to join.