Social science & medicine
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Social science & medicine · Oct 2012
Patient-physician relationships in second opinion encounters - the physicians' perspective.
Theories on the patient-physician relationship have evolved within the last decades to portray a nuanced picture of the traditional patient-physician "dyad". Shifts in social, economic, and technological contexts in which the physician-patient encounters are taking place raised the need for more complex frameworks to study patient-physician encounters. One example of a change to this dyad is the increasing use of second opinions. ⋯ Finally, we suggested a humanistic approach to understanding physician and patient behavior, based on mutual recognition of needs. Physicians and patients can benefit from communicating openly, positively and respectfully in second opinion encounters. Perceiving the second opinion as a legitimate and empowering tool, that strengthens and widens the patient-physician relationship, instead of weakening it, may result in greater satisfaction on both sides, both for the clinical decision and for a healthy patient-physician relationship.