• Clinics · Jan 2024

    Physicians' attention to patients' communication cues can improve patient satisfaction with care and perception of physicians' empathy.

    • Carlos Frederico Confort Campos, Clarice Rosa Olivo, Milton de Arruda Martins, and Patricia Zen Tempski.
    • The Centre for Medical and Health Sciences Education, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand; Center for Development of Medical Education, Universidade de São Paulo, Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil. Electronic address: carloscampos@alumni.usp.br.
    • Clinics (Sao Paulo). 2024 Jan 1; 79: 100377100377.

    BackgroundThe pathway that links good communication skills and better health outcomes is still unclear. However, it is known that the way that physicians and patients communicate with each other has direct consequences on more "proximal outcomes", such as perceptions of physician empathy and patient satisfaction. However, which specific communication skills lead to those patient outcomes is still unknown. In this study, the authors aimed to analyze which specific patient and physician communication skills are correlated to patients' satisfaction with care and patient-perceived physician empathy.MethodsThe authors classified and quantified verbal and nonverbal communication of second-year internal medicine residents and their patients through video recordings of their consultations. Patients also rated their satisfaction with care and the physician's empathy for them.ResultsUsing a linear regression model, the authors identified that patients' and physicians' expressions of disapproval, physicians' disruptions, and patients' use of content questions negatively correlated to patients' satisfaction and patient-perceived physician empathy. Conversely, patient affective behaviors and the physician's provision of advice/suggestion were positively correlated to at least one of the patient-measured outcomes.ConclusionOur findings point to the importance of physicians' attentiveness to patients' communication cues. Training physicians to interpret those cues could help develop more satisfactory and empathic therapeutic relationships.Copyright © 2024 HCFMUSP. Published by Elsevier España, S.L.U. All rights reserved.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…