QUESTIONS UNDER STUDY/PRINCIPLES Medical errors are prevalent, but physicians commonly lack the training and skills to disclose them to their patients. Existing research has yielded a set of verbal messages physicians should communicate during error disclosures. However, considering the emotional message contents, patients likely derive much of the meaning from physicians' nonverbal behaviours....

BACKGROUND The assessment of communication competence has become a major priority of medical educational, policy, and licensing organizations in the United States and Canada. Multiple tools are available to assess communication competence, but there are few studies that compare the tools. METHODS A consensus panel of six family medicine educators evaluated 15 instruments measuring the physici...

OBJECTIVE To present preliminary evidence for the reliability and validity of the Four Habits Coding Scheme (4HCS), an instrument based on a teaching model used widely throughout Kaiser Permanente to improve clinicians' communication skills. METHODS One hundred videotaped primary care visits were coded using the 4HCS, and the data were assessed against a previously available data set for thes...

One of the concerns patients have when confronted with a medical condition is which physician to trust. Any recommendation system that seeks to answer this question must ensure any sensitive medical information collected by the system is properly secured. In this paper we codify these privacy concerns in a privacyfriendly framework and present two architectures that realize it: the Secure Proce...

The authors examine the social impact of introducing advanced exam-room technologies to the doctorpatient interaction. A total 342 participants viewed one of several video conditions portraying a physician conducting a medical interview in which he used one of 5 documenting methods/devices (nothing, pen and paper, PDA, desktop computer, wearable computer). After viewing the interaction, partici...

This study is an investigation of the existence and potential causes of systematic differences between patients and physicians in their assessments of the intensity of patients' pain. In an emergency department in France, patients (N=200) and their physicians (N=48) rated the patients' pain using a visual analog scale, both on arrival and at discharge. Results showed, in confirmation of previou...

BACKGROUND Effective information transfer in primary care is becoming more difficult as the volume of medical information expands. Emailed research synopses are expected to raise awareness and thereby permit more effective information retrieval. OBJECTIVE To identify key factors that influence physicians' self-reported cognitive impact of emailed research synopses. METHOD In this prospectiv...

Standard guidelines for cancer pain treatment routinely recommend training patients to reduce barriers to pain relief, use medications appropriately, and communicate their pain-related needs. Methods are needed to reduce professional time required while achieving sustained intervention effectiveness. In a multisite, randomized controlled trial, this study tested a pain training method versus a ...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Patient-centered care, which is dependent on knowing each patient as an individual, has been identified as a critical aspect of healthcare. The most effective and efficient methods to get to know patients as individuals have not been defined. Our aim was to identify questions and phrases that can be used by physicians to get to know their patients. METHODS We surveyed...