• Danielle Blanch-Hartigan.
• Office of Cancer Survivorship, Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA. danielleblanch@gmail.com
• Patient Educ Couns. 2013 Oct 1; 93 (1): 56-62.

ObjectivePrevious research has examined physicians' ability to respond to or identify the type of emotion cues. Yet in physician-patient interactions, identification and response are preceded by the ability to detect whether an emotion cue has occurred. This research assesses consequences of emotion detection errors for patient satisfaction.MethodsParticipants responding to an online survey read one of six randomly assigned descriptions of a physician-patient interaction varying on: whether the patient presented an emotion cue; whether the physician detected an emotion cue; and whether the physician correctly identified the cue. Participants then rated satisfaction with the physician.ResultsSatisfaction was highest when the physician correctly detected the patient's emotion cue and lowest when the physician failed to detect the patient's emotion. Failing to detect the emotion cue had lower satisfaction than other emotion processing errors, including falsely detecting an emotion cue that was not there or incorrectly identifying the type of emotion.ConclusionsEmotion cue detection has implications for patient satisfaction distinct from emotion identification.Practice ImplicationsResults suggest it may be better for physicians to incorrectly identify than miss an emotion. Training for healthcare providers should consider incorporating emotion detection.Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd.

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