That's what the doctors told an audience at Long Wharf Theatre Sunday -- only to be told by one passionate audience member that doctors still haven't learned to listen.

The conversation took place after the matinee performance of Smith's newest work, "Let Me Down Easy." The show, in which Smith recreates conversations she had with doctors and patients and others in New Haven and around the world, is about "the resilience and vulnerability of the human body."

That was the focus of the discussion Sunday with cardiologist Forrester "Woody" Lee and nephrologist Asghar Rastegar.

Smith's newest performance evolved from work she began at Yale-New Haven Hospital in the mid-1990s. She interviewed both Forrester and Rastigar as part of that initial performance piece.

Rastigar (pictured) said of that time, "We had been discussing for a long time the fact that our residents and physicians have difficulty hearing what patients are saying. They listen, but they are unable to hear what's going on."

He went on to give the example of a woman who had been his patient for six years at the time Smith had a conversation with her.

"What Anna got out of her she had never shared with me. She, only sitting with her in my office only one time, was able to get the true reason why she did not want dialysis."

One woman in the audience didn't buy that the medical profession has made any progress at all in this regard. "What you've just described [doctors who listen] is extremely rare, almost never heard of in the United States today," she said, "because doctors not only don't listen, but they're incapable of listening. They've already drawn their own conclusions before you even have a chance to change it. How do you as a patient overcome that? How do you engage with them?"

Rastigar answered, "I think all of us see that as being a crisis in American medicine, and is the reason why so many patients look to other sources of care. We lose the trust of patients because we are unable to listen to them better." He cautioned audience members to "choose your doctor carefully."

Lee (pictured) said that a successful model of care must include a partnership between patient and physician.

"I'm so overwhelmed by the problems of the health care system that must be attended to before we can go back to being doctors. We don't have time [to spend with patients], because of the pressure of how we manage intake and discharge of patients and how we manage offices."